“Tell me how you left Mrs. Paul,” Annie asked.
“Oh, thanks, very well,” Dick assured her; and there was a moment’s pause. Mrs. Pugsley and Dave were blankly silent. Annie talked against time.
“It was so nice to get home. Just think, I had been away five years,” she said; “that’s a pretty long time not to see one’s father; father didn’t know me when he met me at the station;—now, I would have known you anywhere!” she reproached Johnny, with a loving look.
“Well, but now, you’d growed, Annie; that’s what I said when I saw her. I says, ‘Why, Annie, you’ve growed!’ Dave, here, don’t see no change in her. But I do,” Johnny ended proudly.
“You must have missed your daughter very much,” Mr. Temple murmured.
“Well, indeed, an’ he did,” Mrs. Pugsley said resentfully; “but she would be studyin’. She’s that set on it.”
“Miss Graham is devoted to mathematics,” Dick began miserably, “and—and that sort of thing”—
He stopped so abruptly that Mrs. Pugsley’s hoarse whisper to Dave Duggan was audible to all,—