"You're a dear, good boy to say it. No, please, Wally, don't or I shall go upstairs. Now sit by the fire again—that's better—and smoke if you want to, and let me finish these papers."
They were for the greater part the odds and ends which accumulate in every desk. There were receipted bills, old insurance policies, letters that had once seemed worth prizing, catalogues of things that had never been bought, prospectuses, newspaper clippings, copies of old contracts. And yet they had an interest, too—an interest partly historical, partly personal.
This merry letter, for instance, which Mary read and smiled over—who was the "Jack" who had written it? "Dead, perhaps, like dad," thought Mary. Yes, dead perhaps, and all his fun and drollery suddenly fallen into silence and buried with him.
"Isn't life queer!" she thought. "Now why did he save this clipping?"
She read the clipping and enjoyed it. Wally, watching from his chair, saw the smile which passed over her face.
"She'll warm up some day," he confidently told himself, with that bluntness of thought which comes to us all at times. "See how she flared up because I danced with Helen. Maybe if I made her jealous…"
At the desk Mary picked up another paper—an old cable. She read it, re-read it, and quietly folded it again; but for all her calmness the colour slowly mounted to her cheeks, as the recollection of odd words and phrases arose to her mind.
"Wally," she said in her quietest voice, "I'm going to ask you a question, but first you must promise to answer me truly."
"Cross my heart and hope to die!"
"Are you ready?"