His negative was too final for her to press that topic further. She chose another.
"Let's see the sunset first. We may have no more days like this."
"I am quite sure of that." The words were murmured under his breath. They seemed to Judith, still under the mysterious spell which had been cast about her, to be fraught with solemn significance. Suddenly she realised that it was cold. She shivered even when she had donned her coat.
Quite silently they walked into the garden, and without either speaking, went straight to the spot where their lines of life had first crossed. He looked about him, a twisted little smile on his lips.
"Here is where Roger wanted to have me thrown out," he said thoughtfully. "Shouldn't wonder if he regretted now that he didn't."
"Roger cares for you more than any other man in the world," she cried. There was a catch in her voice, why, she did not know. "You've done wonders—you've made that boy a man. You're his mainstay. I can't ever...." She attributed the lump which persisted in rising in her throat to her affection for her brother. That is, she tried to attribute it to that.
"I'm his mainstay no longer," he corrected her gravely. "I did what I could for him. Now it's up to Molly. But her task is easy. The boy's under his own steam now."
"You think so?" The pride and joy in her eyes were unmistakable. But there was something else there which one less obtuse than Good would have seen even more clearly.
"No question about it. He took hold from the start. He's proved his ability. He's the actual business head of the organisation now—truly he is. When Jenkins left, Roger stepped right into his place and the ranks never wavered. The lad's been slow in finding himself—no doubt of that. But that's all over. His girl's wise—she knows. The world will know it soon, too. Why, if I wasn't there to prevent it, he'd make The Dispatch into a money-maker in no time!" The last words were said with a twinkle in his eyes, but it seemed to Judith that a certain sadness lay behind the jest.
"I'm so glad," she cried. "He's meant so much to me."