"Only you, at present—and of course his partner. He smiled:
"Bill Nourse is not a very brisk digger."
"Well," she remarked, in a casual tone, "if you know of brisker diggers about—people who knew him—"
"Say no more. I'll search the town." Their eyes had met for an instant.
"Yes," she thought, "I'm getting on."
Dwight lunched with Joe soon after that, and later in the studio he and
Ethel had a talk.
"In a good many ways," he assured her, "he struck me as the same old Joe—friendly and hospitable—he insisted on ordering quite a meal. But we didn't eat much of it. We talked."
"Of Paris!"
"Very much so. There's a lot of Paris in him yet." And he told of their long conversation.
"Now," she said, when she rose to leave, "if you'll just keep at him occasionally—while his partner does the same at the office, and I do what I can at home—"
"You insist on his being home every night?"