"Without money!" exclaimed Mr. Mitchell, in surprise.
"Yes," confessed Hampstead, flushing a little. "My salary was not very munificent, you know, and I have usually contrived to get rid of it, frequently before I got the pay check in my hands."
Mr. Mitchell's small, prudent eyes looked disfavor at a spendthrift.
"However," he suggested, "you have only yourself to think of."
"That's another point against me," confessed Hampstead. "I have some one else to look out for. My brother-in-law is an artist, you know, and he has not been very successful yet, so that I hold myself ready to help with my sister and the children if it should ever become necessary."
"That's a handicap," declared Mitchell flatly.
"I won't admit it," said John loyally. "You don't know those children. Tayna's the girl, nearly twelve now, a beauty if her nose is pugged. Such hair and eyes, and such a heart! Dick's the boy, past ten. He's had asthma always, and is about a thousand years old, some ways. But they—"
Hampstead gulped queerly.
"Those two children," he plunged on, "are dearer to me than anything in the whole wide world. You know," and his tone became still more confidential, while his eyes grew moist, "it would only be something that happened to them that would keep me from going on with my stage career."
Mitchell's respect for John was changing oddly to a fatherly feeling. He felt that he was getting acquainted with his clerk for the first time. He resolved that he would not tempt the boy, and that if it became necessary, he would help him. However, before he could express this resolve, if he had intended to express it, the telephone rang.