"What length?"
"Ten years. Grandfather was coming home, to stay. We were all to go up to Saint Louis on the Quakeress."
"Phyllis too?"
"Yes, to meet him there and bring him back with us."
"Ten years!" marvelled Ramsey. "Hadn't Phyllis ever heard from my—from Walnut Hills?"
"Now and then, yes; and when those ten years seemed to have worn her, body and soul, to the breaking point——"
"You're strange. You feel tender to her yet."
"Perhaps I do. One day—night—she got word—I heard it from my nursery bed—she got news; news that to her was as good and as bad as news could be."
"That he was on the river again!" guessed Ramsey.
"Yes, relearning it—it changes so fast, you know—and that your father had asked my father to employ him; for he didn't want to go with your father."