“Win’s trying to grow,” said the other, knowing that his insignificant size was a mortification to the young man. “So he’s standing out in the rain like a plant.”
“Rain’s all right,” said Win. “I like it.”
“No doubt about that, sonny. Only thing to doubt’s your sanity.”
“Cute little day, ain’t it?” said his companion.
“Win likes it,” said the first. “Keep it up, old chap, and you’ll be six feet high before the winter’s over.”
And they went off cackling to the club to tell the story of Win, with the water pouring off his hat and his glasses damp, standing staring at the pavement on Post Street.
Win opened his umbrella and went on. He walked home slowly and by a circuitous route. His mind traversed the subject back and forth, and at each moment he became more convinced, as all the muddle of puzzling circumstances fell into place in logical sequence.
She was his half-sister, older than he was—his father’s first-born. By this accident of birth she was an outcast, penniless and unacknowledged, from the home and fortune he and Maud had inherited. At the very moment when the father had found her free to accept his bounty he had been snatched away. And she knew it. That was the explanation of her changeable conduct. She had found it out in some way between the deaths of her mother and Shackleton. Some one had told her or she had discovered it herself.
In the dripping dark Win pondered it all, going up and down the ascending streets in a tortuous route homeward, wondering at fate, communing with himself.