"I will tell you to-night, father. Shall you be dining at home to-night?"
"Yes, if you wish it. I had thought of dining at the club; but if you wish it, Kate, I will come home."
"I should like you to come home; I may have something to talk over."
Mr. Hunt agreed.
"Just as you like, of course," he said. He looked hard at her, and an uneasy sensation stirred within him.
She was the idol of his life; she was all the child he had ever had; she represented everything that made his money valuable. He was a rough diamond—a rough sort of man in every sense of the word. But he was tender, and gentle, and chivalrous to Katherine. He had always been tender and chivalrous to her. He respected her; she was a good girl, and he knew it. He trusted her implicitly. If he had a dread in life, it was that some day she might leave him; she might do what in his opinion all worthy women did—seek a husband and a home of her own. He did not want this. The thought of her marrying did not annoy him, but the thought of her leaving him was almost unbearable. If only he could secure a son-in-law who would be submissive—who would be satisfied to live at home, to share the big house with Katherine and himself—then, indeed, he would consider himself a lucky man. But no such son-in-law had ever loomed across his horizon, and he was not the man to seek one. He was a keen business man, but he could do nothing towards making an establishment for Katherine. His dread now, as he looked into her face, was that a son-in-law of the undesirable sort—a man who would want to take his one ewe lamb away from him—had appeared; that Katherine had found her mate, and was going to leave him.
"For if she does want to go, I can't refuse her," he thought. "Although it break my heart, I can't refuse her anything."
So he went away a little anxious and slightly perturbed. Katherine would not ask him to come home to dinner for a mere nothing.
Meanwhile that young lady thought out her thoughts, and having arranged them compactly and neatly to her own satisfaction, she proceeded to act. She was very sensible, very wise. She was also very clever. From her earliest days she had possessed a talent for writing. She had written smart articles more than once for the different newspapers. She was rather in request as society correspondent to a weekly, which, for the purposes of this story, we will call The Snowball. The Snowball had on several occasions published a series of papers by this young lady, and now Katherine Hunt drove straight to the office in order to interview the editor.
Times were busy for newspaper people. Newspaper proprietors and editors were at their wits' end as to how to shove and push into their papers all the interesting items with regard to the war which were pouring in by Reuters and every other telegraphic agency. The editor of The Snowball would not have seen any other outside correspondent that day; but Katherine Hunt was a valuable contributor to his paper, and he sent a message that he would spare her a few moments. She entered his office in her usual bright, brisk fashion, and came to the point at once.