“But lissen, Eddy! It turns out it was a cousin o’ Miss Amy’s! It seems they found some papers an’ letters an’ all near where they found him, an’ he turns out to be her cousin! This Mr. Teagle, he’s a lawyer. They sent for him, an’ he come out here to look at the poor feller, and then he come to the house, ’cause Miss Amy’s goin’ to get all his money. She took on somethin’ terrible! Mr. Solway, he telephoned to Mr. Dexter, and he come out, too. I guess it was kinder to comfort her.”
“What would she be needin’ all the comfortin’ for?” demanded the cook. “She’d never set eyes on the cousin at all, and her to be gettin’ all that money.”
“She’s kinder sensitive,” said Gracie.
“Sensitive, is it!” said the cook, with significance.
Ross went on eating his dinner. He did not appear to be interested. When he had finished, he bade them all a civil good night, and got up and went out.
“He’s a cold-blooded fish,” said Gracie.
Yet, something seemed to keep him warm—something kept him steadfast and untroubled as he walked, head down, against the storm of wind and sleet, along the lonely roads to the town. He found the barber shop to which Eddy had directed him, and when he entered, the lively little Italian barber did not think his face forbidding.
“I’ve come for the little girl,” said Ross.
“Oh, she’s all right!” cried the barber. “She’s O. K. She eata soom nica dinner—verrie O. K. She sooma kid.”
He was a happy little man, pleased with his thriving business, with his family, with his own easy fluency in the use of the American tongue. He took Ross through the brilliantly lighted white tiled shop—a sanitary barber, he was—into a back room, where were his wife and his own small children.