“John Galbraith,” said Bella. “He is way up there, and I won’t be the one to pull him down.”
“Oh-h. I was half afraid you meant he was dead.”
“As good as dead.”
Fear took fresh hold on the older girl. He is going to marry some one else, Hildegarde said to herself. Yes, yes; as she looked at poor Bella’s face, she was sure of it. And now the slim little figure had sunk on its knees. She leaned against her friend for support. But she looked out across Hildegarde’s shoulder, searching space through tears. Hildegarde held tight the childish-looking hands, and asked the last question she was ever to put about the common hero of their girlhood. “Where is he?” she said.
“He’s gone off with Mr. Borisoff somewhere.”
“You mean you don’t know where?”
“Somewhere in the arctic.” She hid her face in Hildegarde’s lap.
They sat so a long, long time.
In spite of her year’s absence, Bella found nothing much changed in the Valdivia situation, except that the Mar boys had “got on” more than ever, and that their father’s form of progress seemed still more strikingly to consist in “getting on” in years.
It was a long time since his wife had given him the credit for doing more than his share at the bank with a view to promotion to be head cashier, or even a “silent partner.” Each time a vacancy occurred some one else had stepped into it; Louis Cheviot had been the last. But Mrs. Mar learned through the years that the reason her husband accepted increased tasks was that he was born to bear burdens, as the sparks to fly upward. If any extra work was “going,” so to speak, it gravitated unerringly to Nathaniel Mar. As to the question of his reward, what would be gained by giving a better position to a man who in any crisis could be depended on to do all the work of a higher office, and never ask for increased emolument? The only person who ever hinted such a thing to the Trennors had been Cousin Harriet. The Trennor Brothers’ success (which was proverbial in Valdivia) had long extended to avoidance of Cousin Harriet. Certainly Mr. Mar’s life-long ill-luck brought out more clearly the fact of his boys’ early prosperity. Not that it was enormous as yet, though quite sufficient to have enabled them to marry, had they so chosen.