"Female secretaries are pernicious," he cried angrily. "They're worse'n a colony of gophers in a wheat patch. You want a temperature of forty below to keep your office cool with a woman working in it. Hendrie always hated the cold."
But his apprehensions did not end there. Later he learned that Deep Willows was to be Monica's future home, and the place was to be immediately prepared for her reception.
This time the telephone over which he had received his instructions got the full benefit of his displeasure.
It was cold and calm, and thoroughly biting.
"I'll need to chase a new job, or the old one'll chase me," he muttered, and the thermometer of his feelings for women, as a race, dropped far below the zero at which it had hitherto stood.
But there was far too much of the old Crofter's blood in Angus's veins to let him relinquish the gold mine which Hendrie's affairs were to him. However he disliked the new conditions of things he kept his feelings to himself, or only permitted their expression before silent witnesses. With all the caution of his forefathers he awaited developments, and refrained from any precipitate action; and, later on, he was more than glad he had exercised such restraint.
The necessary preparations were duly put in hand, and Angus supervised everything himself. Every detail was carried out with that exactness for which Hendrie's manager was noted. He spared no pains, and that was his way. His native shrewdness had long ago taught him how best he could serve his employer's interests, and, consequently, his own. Implicit obedience to the millionaire left him with enormous pickings, and the building up of Hendrie's miniature world of wheat had left him comparatively a rich man, with small agricultural interests scattered all over the north-west. He was not the man to turn and rend the golden calf he worshiped, nor to attempt to cook his own tame golden goose in the fire of his displeasure. Besides, deep down in his rugged heart, he was utterly devoted to his employer. So he gave Monica and her husband a royal welcome to Deep Willows.
After all Monica was not permitted to explore Deep Willows by herself. Hendrie contrived to get his business in Chicago temporarily adjusted, and, as a surprise, explained at the last moment to his bride that he could not bring himself to permit her going to Deep Willows for the first time without him.
The news at once pleased and terrified Monica. Her thoughts flew to Frank, and her appointment with him, and it became necessary at once to despatch a "rushed" wire to put him off. When this had been done she felt more at ease, and abandoned herself to her pleasure in the thought that, after all, her husband was to accompany her to the home which she had decided should be theirs.
But it left her with a fuller understanding of the difficulties and dangers with which she was beset. She realized that an added caution was needed. That it would be so easy to make a slip, and so run the risk of wrecking her newly found happiness.