"Jack! Jack! You did it! You did it!" he cried.
"Peter!" Jack seized the secretary's hands and swung them back and forth.
"You've got a grip of iron! And tanned—my, how you're tanned! You did it, Jack, you did it! It hardly seems credible, when I think of the last time I saw you."
It was then that the secretary had seen a Jack with his eyes moist; a Jack pasty-faced, hollow-cheeked; and, in what was a revolutionary outburst for a unit in the offices, Peter Mortimer had put his arm around the boy in a cry for the success of the Odyssey for health which the heir was about to begin. And Mortimer's words were sweet, while the words of the farewell from the other side of the glass-paneled door marked "Private" were acrid with the disappointed hopes of the speaker.
"You have always been a weakling, Jack, and I have had little to say about your rearing. Go out to the desert and stay—stay till you are strong!" declared the voice of strength, as if glad to be freed of the sight of weakness in its own image.
"Father did not come to meet me?" Jack observed questioningly now to Mortimer.
"He was very busy—he did not feel certain about the nature of your telegram—he—" and Mortimer's impulses withdrew into the shell of the professional private secretary.
"I wired that he should see for himself if I were well. So he shall!" said Jack, turning toward the door.
"Yes—that will be all right—yes, there is no one with him!"
Mortimer, in the very instinct of long practice, was about to go in to announce the visitor, but paused. As Jack entered, whatever else may have been in his eyes, there was no moisture.