"You're thinking something of the writer-man, lassie? Don't mind the clavers of an auld man who never had a chick or child of his ain."
Her answer was such as a child might have made. She lifted the big-jointed hand on the coverlet and pressed it softly to her flushed cheek, and he understood.
"I thought so; I was afraid so," he said, slowly. "You say you have known him a long time: it canna have been long enough, bairnie."
"But it is," she insisted, loyally. "I know him better than he knows himself; oh, very much better."
"Ye know the good in him, maybe; there's good in all men, I'm thinking now, though there was a time when I didna believe it."
"I know the good and the bad—and the bad is only the good turned upside down."
Again the sick man wagged his head on the pillow and closed his eyes.
"Ye're a loving lassie, Maggie, and that's a' there is to it," he commented; and after another interval: "What must be, must be. We spoke of this man Broffin: I must see him before Johnson comes. Can ye get him for me, Maggie, child?"
She nodded and went down-stairs to the telephone, returning almost immediately.
"I was fortunate enough to catch him at the hotel. He will be here in a few minutes," was the word she brought; and Galbraith thanked her with his eyes.