"Asking you to come to see him?"
"Yes. Your father was the first friend I made in London."
"And that was some years ago?"
"About four years ago. I had come over from Ireland with a few pounds in my pocket, and a portmanteau full of music, which I soon found no one wanted."
"You had written music before you had met father?"
"Yes, I was organist at St. Patrick's in Dublin for nearly three years. There's no one like your father, Miss Innes."
"No one, is there?" she replied enthusiastically. "There's no one like him. I'm so glad you are friends. You see him nearly every day, and you show him all your music." Then after a pause, she said, "Tell me, did he miss me very much?"
"Yes, he missed you, of course. But he felt that you were not wholly to blame."
"And you took my place. I can see it all. It was father and son, instead of father and daughter. How well you must have got on together. What talks you must have had."
The silence was confidential, and though they both were thinking of Mr. Innes, they seemed to become intimately aware of each other.