She got up and went into the private office, and there, at Mr. Brown’s desk, sat the new man. It was a shock to find him so young. He looked almost boyish. He was thin and dark, with a careless, preoccupied air.
“Miss Craig?” he said. “Sit down! Take a letter, please. ‘Messrs. Pryden & Fort, P-r-y—’”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t take shorthand,” Joey interrupted in her quiet way.
He glanced up at her.
“I thought—” he began, and stopped short as their eyes met.
II
Mark Napier was hard as nails, in a way. Lucky for him that he was!
He had been a boy of eighteen, just out of school, and ready to enter Oxford, when the war broke out. He had enlisted, and had been sent to Flanders; had been wounded, patched up and sent back, and wounded twice again. The third time the doctors told him that very likely he would never walk again.
For six months he had lain in the hospital, facing that possibility, facing all the other new things he had learned. In the course of time the doctors had reversed their decision, and he was discharged as cured—a most interesting case.
He went home—only he had no home[Pg 528] to go to. The war had done for his family. His mother had died, his brother had been killed, and so had most of the friends he had cared for. There was no money—nothing at all left for young Napier.