“You don’t look forward to it as much as I do,” I said warmly. “It is difficult for me to realize that there was ever a time when you were not a part of my life. And yet we are quite new friends.”
“Yes,” she said; “only a few weeks old. But I have the same feeling. I seem to have known you for years, and as for Arabella, she speaks of you as if she had nursed you from infancy. You have a very insinuating way with you.”
“Oh, don’t spoil it by calling me insinuating!” I protested.
“No, I won’t,” she replied. “It was the wrong word. I meant sympathetic. You have the gift of entering into other people’s troubles and feeling them as if they were your own; which is a very precious gift—to the other people.”
“Your troubles are my own,” said I, “since I have the privilege to be your friend. But I have been a happier man since I shared them.”
“It is very nice of you to say that,” she murmured, with a quick glance at me and just a faint heightening of colour; and then for a while neither of us spoke.
“Have you seen Dr. Thorndyke lately?” she asked, when she had refilled our cups, and thereby, as it were, punctuated our silence.
“Yes,” I answered. “I saw him only a night or two ago. And that reminds me that I was commissioned to make some inquiries. Can you tell me if your father ever did any electrotype work for outsiders?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “He used latterly to electrotype most of his own work instead of sending it to the bronze-founders, but it is hardly likely that he would do electros for outsiders. There are firms who do nothing else, and I know that, when he was busy, he used to send his work to them. But why do you ask?”
I related to her what Thorndyke had told me, and pointed out the importance of ascertaining the facts, which she saw at once.