Kirkwood and Nan reappeared as they heard Fred saying good-bye to Rose.
Nan said she and her sister must be going, too, as they had some calls to make. At the door Nan kissed Phil, and asked her to come to see her the next day. The kiss and this special invitation, half-whispered, confirmed Phil's belief that her father and Nan would have told her of their engagement if Fred's coming had not interfered. She was glad for the delay, and yet it would have been easier in many ways to have met the issue squarely before Nan and Rose. She and her father watched Fred and the women pass from sight toward town.
"He seems to be a nice fellow," remarked Kirkwood, as they returned to the living-room—"a clean, manly sort of chap."
"He's all that," replied Phil. "He came to thank you for something: he's too shy to talk much in company and he asked me to tell you how much he appreciated something or other you had done for him."
"Queer chap, for a Holton," Kirkwood observed, striking a match on the underside of the slate mantel-shelf. "There's a real nobility in that boy. He didn't tell you what he wanted to speak to me about? That's better yet. I imagine his brother isn't so shy about publishing his good works before men."
Kirkwood's eyes sought the roses. The "attentions" Phil was receiving had roused in him the mixed bewilderment and awe with which a father realizes that he has on his hands a daughter upon whom other men have begun to look covetously. Half a dozen young fellows were dancing attendance upon Phil. In the hotel and at the theater in Indianapolis men and women had paid her the tribute of a second glance, and Mrs. Fitch had been enthusiastic about her. His tolerant spirit had not visited upon the young Holtons the sins of their uncle. Charles's devotion to Phil had rather amused him; he had taken it as an oblique compliment to himself, assuming that it was due to anxiety on Charles's part to ingratiate himself with Phil's father quite as much as with Phil.
"I suppose what Fred meant was a little matter between us in the traction business. You know that farm he settled on next to Amzi's? He's turned it over to me."
"You mean he doesn't own it any more?" asked Phil.
"Strictly speaking, no. In the general Holton mess he thought he ought to surrender the property. Rather quixotic, but creditable to the boy. You see Charlie was executor of their father's estate. Charlie's beyond doubt a very smooth young person. And no end plausible. He got Fred to take that farm in settlement of all claims against Samuel's estate. And when Fred found out there was trouble over his father's financiering of the Sycamore he hopped on the trolley and came to the city and turned over the farm to me as trustee. He seemed no end grateful to me for allowing him to do it."
"But you didn't let him—it isn't fair! Why the farm's no good anyhow! And besides, Charlie wouldn't have done Fred an injury. He talked to me the other day at his aunt's skating-party about all that traction business and I'm sure he never meant any harm. He couldn't help what his father did. But to take Fred's farm away—why, daddy, that would be the supreme grand limite!"