She bade him “Good evening!” and they shook hands. She had just come from her day’s work at the lumber company’s office, she explained. He found no reason for reversing his earlier judgment that she was a very pretty girl. Now that her head was free of the hat with the red feather, he saw that her hair, caught up in a becoming pompadour, was brown, with a golden glint in it. Her gray eyes seemed larger in the light of the single gas-burner than they had appeared by daylight at the bank. There was something poetic and dreamy about them. Her age he placed at about half his own, but there was the wisdom of the centuries in those gray eyes of hers. He felt young before her.
“There was a detective in the bank when I was in there this morning. He knew me,” she said at once.
“Yes; he spoke of you,” said Burgess.
“And he knows—what does he know?”
The girl’s manner was direct; he felt that she was entitled to a frank response.
“He told me your father had been—we will say suspected in times past; that he had only lately come here; but, unless he deceived me, I think he has no interest in him just now. The detective is a friend of mine. He visits the bank frequently. It was just by chance that he spoke of you.”
“You didn’t tell him that Mr. Gordon had asked you to come here?”
“No; Drake wasn’t mentioned.”
Nellie nodded; she seemed to be thinking deeply. Her prettiness was enhanced, he reflected, by the few freckles that clustered about her nose. And he was ready to defend the nose which the detective, reciting from his card catalogue, had called snub!
“Did your friend tell you Bob wants to be married before he leaves? I suppose you don’t know that?”