To Evan Shelby Blount,
Standish Apartments, Boston.
You have had everything that money could buy, and you owe me nothing but an occasional sight of your face. If you are not tied to some woman's apron-string, why can't you come West and grow up with your native State?
David Blount.
It was characteristic of Richard Gantry, light-handed juggler of friendly phrases, but none the less a careful and methodical official of a great railway company, that he folded the telegram in the original creases before he passed it back.
"Well?" said Blount, when the pause had grown over-abundantly long.
"I was just thinking," was the reflective rejoinder. "We used to be fairly chummy in the old Ann Arbor days, Evan, and yet I never, until a few days ago, knew or guessed that Senator Blount was your father."
"He was and is," was the quiet reply. "I supposed everybody knew it."
"I didn't," Gantry denied, adding: "You may not realize it, but what you don't tell people about yourself would make a pretty big book if it were printed."
Blount's smile was altogether friendly.