Then began a series of questions and answers, recitations and interruptions, commendations and exaggerations. For two hours the mother, the son and the two wide-eyed girls listened and looked, or asked and received. The expressions Evan used puzzled them, but he shook his head deprecatingly when they asked for definitions which he knew would be unintelligible to them. He had not been talking with them long before he discovered how to interest them—by saying mysterious things. From the moment of his discovery he revelled in the clerical technical phrases that he had picked up at the Mt. Alban office, and the women justified the assertion of that circus man who said: "Humanity likes to be humbugged."
Lou, with a new and sudden affection for housework, insisted on getting the supper. Mrs. Nelson, of course, could not consent to it on this the night of her banker's return; nobody's hands but her own must lay the cloth and mix the salad. But Lou was strangely insistent, and the upshot of the competition was co-operation. Evan was left on the verandah with Frankie.
No doubt there is a time for everything. That was the time for Evan to tell how lonesome he had been.... And this is the time to make a brief sketch of Miss Arling. Her face was sweet, then it was thoughtful; her eyes were blue-green, bright. She looked not unlike Love's incarnation. She bore a strong resemblance to a baby. In short, she was—what her best friends called her—a dear.
"You don't know how I have missed you, Frank," said Evan, and when she gave him a scrutinizing look, he hurriedly added: "a fellow gets so lonesome, you know."
"Do you like the bank, Evan?" she asked, fencing.
"You bet. A fellow gets such a good insight into—things."
"You were a dandy at school," she observed seriously.
He eyed her suspiciously. He was no longer a school-boy. He repeated a remark he had heard in the office:
"If a fellow goes to school all his life he misses the education of business. That's how it is so many professional men fall down when it comes to collecting accounts."
Frankie regarded him with a smile in which considerable admiration shone. She was just a girl of seventeen.