"Not much trade these wintry days and if customers come, they'll stick around like summer bull-flies." He accomplished the only laugh of the morning.
"But who is there to tell Oliver, when he comes back, that I've arrived and am waiting?"
Harry Karmack's freshly shaved, usually ruddy face went as white as the girl's natural pallor at this unexpected turn to his attempted whimsicality. He staggered back as if she had struck him a blow. Seymour, standing near, steadied him into a chair.
"That bad heart of yours again, old top?" the sergeant asked quietly.
No one ever had heard of anything being the matter with Karmack's heart, but the timely question served to cover his emotion. Mrs. Morrow noticed it, but did not wonder thereat, Evidently Moira had hit these sons of isolation hard, and there were in prospect interesting sessions, she thought, for Mission House living room that winter.
Seymour decided he had endured enough agony for one morning and so, on the plea of police routine, started for the post. But the thumbscrew of misadventure was to receive one more turn. From the door of Mission House the melodious voice of Moira carried to him.
"Oh, Sergeant Scarlet, please do keep an eye open for my merry brother along Rideau Street, or whatever you call the thoroughfare which passes your headquarters."
"And I'll have him paged at the Chateau Laurier and ask for him out at Brittania Park," he managed to answer in terms of the city of her schooling. But he had no heart for the jest, mindful of the change that soon must come to her happy mood.
He entered the police shack by the back door and looked in for a moment on Olespe. His prisoner from Lady Franklin oblivious of his fate, seemed to revel in the luxury of the guard room's warmth. The sergeant went through and out the front way.
"Rideau Street indeed," ran his thoughts. "What a name for that streak through the snow in Armistice!"