“Yes’m,” said Will, shame-faced and awkward.
“I have been wondering whom it could be that Mr. Williams cabled would meet me here. The name was unknown to me. What are you, a valet?”
“Hardly that, madam,” replied Will, with a hearty, boyish laugh; and I think that laugh must have made a favorable impression upon the lady, for she lowered her eye-glass and murmured:
“I have been from home so long that I am ignorant of present conditions there. But you seem to have grown bigger, and—and—older.”
“Naturally, madam,” said he; and then he added, with an assumption of such dignity as he could command under the circumstances: “I have the honor to be your husband’s confidential agent, abroad upon business matters. For this reason Mr. Williams thought it best that I should meet you here and offer such services as I may be able to render you.”
“To be sure,” she said, musingly; “and it was very thoughtful of him. If I remember rightly, you were the boy that carried Annabel home the day she fell into the pond.”
He bowed.
“I am glad to see, Mrs. Williams, that you seem to have quite recovered your good health,” he observed, to get away from the subject.
“Not quite, sir,” she answered, in a more cordial tone; “but I am much better than when I first came from America. Won’t you sit down?” noting that he was still standing. “And now, please tell me how you left my children. Were they well? Are they growing? Really, I shall be glad to see them again after this long separation.”
Will had his own ideas about the interest the woman took in her children; but it was a subject very interesting to him personally, so he chatted away in his usual bright manner, relating the progress of his friends and playmates and adding such gossip of Bingham as he thought might interest his listener.