Adairville, Kentucky.
Dear Denny:
Well, here I am! I'm the Captain of my county in the Army of the Furrows, and hope to turn in many thousand pounds of food stuffs for you people in New York to live on. In the meantime Miss Patricia Adair, my sister, is going to New York to see to the putting on of a play she has written for one Mr. Godfrey Vandeford. She is the greatest girl ever, and you stay right on the job seeing that things go right for her while I plant these potatoes to keep you from starving. She will be at the Y. W. C. A. and will sleep and eat safe enough, but you look out for her and don't let her get homesick. If she needs me, of course I will come, but she's a plucky child and you are the best ever, so I'll go on ploughing with a free mind. Let me know how it all goes. What sort of a chap is that Vandeford?
Yours as always and forever,
Roger.
"Can you beat it?" demanded good Dennis, with a blaze of friendship in his eyes as he regarded Miss Patricia Adair. "It was forwarded from my old office number to my new, to Westchester to Nantucket, back to my office, and finally arrived this morning. I've just sent Roger a thousand-word telegram, and I hope he never knows that I was off the job ten days. Give that child here to me, Van, and go get a report on your character for me before you look at her again. Roger Adair is the best friend I've got on earth, next to you, and you'd better watch your step."
"I like his steps," Miss Adair said, and again Mr. Vandeford felt uncertain as to that curious little flutter that was like a nestling of which he felt he was never to be certain and which Mr. Farraday did not seem to observe at all.
"Didn't you know that Roger was turning you over to me, young lady? Why have you side-stepped me?" Mr. Farraday demanded of the young author, in a voice of great severity.
"I thought that Roger was going to write to a Mr. Denny about me; and I didn't write to him that Mr. Denny hadn't come to take care of me because—because I was afraid he'd leave his work and come up to look after me himself. I didn't remember the Farraday part of your name at all. Roger always said 'Denny.'"
"Well, I suppose I'll have to accept that excuse, as it sounds fairly reasonable; but I'd like to know, Van, why you have been keeping my child here in this musty old theater until past luncheon time when she must be both tired and hungry. Come out to Claremont to luncheon, both of you, this minute," Mr. Farraday both questioned and commanded, with pure delight in his voice and manner. "I'll go run the car around to the door, so you won't have to walk in the sun." And he departed as quickly as he had come.
That night Mr. Vandeford lay stretched on his bed in a dark coolness, with his hands clasped over his eyes, when Mr. Farraday came in with his latch-key at twelve-thirty.