“Her mother. I heard her tell Aunt Louisa so a few seconds ago.”
“Poor thing! I wish father would adopt her. No, I don’t either, for then she’d be my sister, and I want her for my wife.”
Hattie now had a hundred questions to answer about the storm, and the steamer, which she did cheerfully.
After dinner Frank had the glory of escorting her home in the family carriage alone—Lizzie pleading a headache, just to give the poor boy a chance to make love to Hattie if he could.
But he never opened his mouth from the time he left home till he set her down at the door of her boarding-house. He couldn’t have done it to save his life. He had caught the love-fever in dead earnest.
CHAPTER XLII.
FOUND.
Mr. W—— stayed but three days in San Francisco. Advertising for a foreman and hands, he was soon overrun with applicants, and had plenty to choose from—good, sober, reliable men. Good materials, too, were plenty to begin with, and in just three days the great “Occidental Book Bindery” of E. W—— & Son was advertised in every paper in San Francisco, and the shop in full blast.
And the same evening Mr. W—— took the Sacramento boat, and was speeding on his way to Oroville, where he was to meet the agent and banker of Wells, Fargo & Co., and take his final departure in search of the “Mountain Home,” which he had seen in the sketch spoken of long ago, and a copy of which was in the letter of instructions which he carried from our Hattie.
From Sacramento by rail Mr. W—— dashed on toward Feather River, and before noon he was at the old National Hotel, with a dozen Chinamen at hand ready to dust him off, wash his clothes, or pick his pockets if the chance came around.
From the polite clerk he soon learned the location of Wells, Fargo & Co.’s office and bank, and in a short time he was in the private office of the latter.