CHAPTER XII.
A Strange Meeting.
hree months afterwards, Frank was planting his tomatoes in his greenhouses. He had two span-roofs, each one hundred and forty feet long by forty feet wide.
He had sold the workshop which was situated a few yards to the north of the house, and had thus been enabled to build larger houses than he at first intended.
He heard vague rumours about his step-mother going to marry again. If the truth must be said, Frank felt delighted at the prospect of getting rid of her. He had never cared for her much, and, recently, the gap that had always existed between them had been considerably enlarged.
He had been out on business and had arrived rather late in the evening, at which Mrs. Mathers was terribly displeased. "I am not going to sit up all night waiting for you," she said, and then she added in a most sarcastic tone of voice: "Perhaps you have been at the cemetery."