"Well, mother, if that's so——" and the impetuous little Major puffed and blew himself out of the room, and might have been heard fuming on the landing, before he went downstairs to console himself with a cigar in the dining-room.
"My son-in-law is an excellent creature, Mr. Faunce, but he talks too much," said Mrs. Rannock. "No doubt he has told you something of the circumstances in which I require your help."
"Yes, madam."
"And now ask me as many questions as you like. I will keep nothing from you. I am too anxious about my son's fate to have any reserve."
"May I ask, madam, in the first place, what reason you have for being anxious about Colonel Rannock?"
"His silence is a sufficient reason—his silence of nearly ten months. My son is a very good correspondent. I don't think he has ever before left me two months without a letter. He is a very good correspondent," she repeated earnestly, as if she were saying, "He is a very good son."
"But have you allowed for the rough life at Klondyke, madam, and the disinclination that a man feels—in a scene of that kind—to sit down and write a letter, dead beat, perhaps, after a day's toil?"
"Yes, I have allowed for that, but I cannot believe—if my son were living"—her eyes filled with irrepressible tears in spite of her struggle to be calm—"and in his right mind, with power to hold a pen—I cannot believe that he would so neglect me."
"And you have written to him, I conclude, madam?"
"I have written week after week. I have sent letters to the Post Office at San Francisco and at Dawson City, where my son told me to address him—letter after letter."