“Have you heard from Arthur?” he asked, suddenly turning to her.
“No. Not since about a month,” she answered. “Why?”
“He will be pleased to find you here, waiting for him,” he said with a smile, handing her the letter. “He will be here some time to-morrow.”
Arthur Allway was her cousin, the son of a Nonconformist Minister. Her father had taken him into the works and for the last three years he had been in Egypt, helping in the laying of a tramway line. He was in love with her: at least so they all told her; and his letters were certainly somewhat committal. Joan replied to them—when she did not forget to do so—in a studiously sisterly vein; and always reproved him for unnecessary extravagance whenever he sent her a present. The letter announced his arrival at Southampton. He would stop at Birmingham, where his parents lived, for a couple of days, and be in Liverpool on Sunday evening, so as to be able to get straight to business on Monday morning. Joan handed back the letter. It contained nothing else.
“It only came an hour or two ago,” her father explained. “If he wrote to you by the same post, you may have left before it arrived.”
“So long as he doesn’t think that I came down specially to see him, I don’t mind,” said Joan.
They both laughed. “He’s a good lad,” said her father.
They kissed good night, and Joan went up to her own room. She found it just as she had left it. A bunch of roses stood upon the dressing-table. Her father would never let anyone cut his roses but himself.
Young Allway arrived just as Joan and her father had sat down to supper. A place had been laid for him. He flushed with pleasure at seeing her; but was not surprised.
“I called at your diggings,” he said. “I had to go through London. They told me you had started. It is good of you.”