Perhaps it was the whistling chatter of the birds that awoke Fred. He said I called to him, but he was mistaken.
He was lying on his back, his head upturned on my lap, and suddenly he opened his eyes and stared up at me. Then slowly he sat up, and he leaned forward on the bench and covered his face with his hands. I thought he was crying, but presently he said to me in a low, husky voice:
"How long have we been here?" and I said:
"All night, Fred."
"Nora Ascough, you're a dead-game sport!" he answered.
XIX
It may sound strange, but I really felt very little the worse for that long night's vigil. I went home, took a cold bath, had breakfast in a near-by restaurant (one of those, ten, twenty, twenty-five-cent places), and went to work just the same as ever. What is more, I had a specially hard day at the yards, for of course Fred was not there, and I had to do a good part of his work.
Frank Hermann wanted to know just how I got away from Fred, and I told him just what had happened. He said admiringly: