"But you couldn't have known that the office belonged to a young man unless you waited there until after he came in!" Betty exclaimed.
Anthony laughed. "Oh, yes, I waited all right and I have been in that same office more or less ever since, until I came home to Woodford the day before yesterday. Of course I meant to clear out as soon as I had finished, but while I was working I heard a quiet chuckle behind me, and swinging around, there stood Mr. Andrews!"
"But who was or is this Mr. Andrews?" Betty asked impatiently, too interested to be particularly polite.
"My next best friend, after you," the young fellow answered. "Why, I think I can remember even now his very first words to me: 'Hello,' he said, 'why are you doing me such a good turn?' 'Because you have just done me one. I slept all night in your office,' I answered. He didn't seem surprised and I thought that rather funny. But afterwards I learned that he had been a poor boy himself and had slept in all sorts of queer places. He is still poor enough, goodness knows, but he has graduated in law and set up an office. He will succeed some day, sure as faith. You can bet on him."
Betty bit her lips, her eyes dancing with amusement and curiosity. Actually her visitor was becoming so much in earnest over his friend that he was forgetting to be afraid of her.
"But what about you and your success?" she demanded.
The young man flushed, moving uncomfortably in his chair, as though yearning to get away from his questioner, and yet not knowing exactly how.
"Success, my success? I haven't yet used that word in connection with myself. I have just managed to keep on working, that's about all. Mr. Andrews let me continue sleeping in his office after I told him my story and cleaning it to pay for my lodging. Then by getting up early enough I arranged to take care of a few others for money and to run errands now and then. I read in between times."
"Read? Read what?" Betty inquired inexorably, half smiling and half frowning at her own persistence. For somehow in their half hour's talk together she had seen something in Anthony Graham that made her guess that the young man had worked harder and dreamed better in this past year than he was willing to acknowledge to her.
But Anthony got up from his chair and began deliberately backing toward the door. He seemed suddenly to have became more awkward and self-conscious. "I read the law books, as there wasn't anything else to read. And I was determined to get more education so that in the future Nan need not be ashamed of me. Afterwards I went to night school and——"