“You did very well,” Aunt Philomela complimented him.
“Thank you. Following this I went into the details of the cold weather, but—you know all about that. I assured him that I was warm and that I had plenty to eat.”
“Daddy hasn’t been able to take food at all without wondering if Joe were hungry.”
“I was well supplied, I assure you. He wished to know more about my friends and so I introduced him to Sam Foss, a most likeable fellow; Ranston, an old college friend of mine out there somewhere; and Bart Stanton, a Massachusetts Technology graduate. So you see my friends averaged up pretty well.”
“They certainly were an improvement on one fingered Bill.”
“Three fingered Bill,” he corrected, “you must be careful of your details.”
“I shall venture to repeat nothing,” she asserted. “And you think he believed all that nonsense?”
“As an eager child believes.”
“I suppose,” she mused sadly, “he has become a bit childlike.”
“He was a child when listening,” Barnes continued, “but when he talked to me it was the father who talked. I’m sorry the real child who wrote the childish letter didn’t hear what he said to me.”