"Don't fash yourself, Tom. If she's the sort you say, and went as far as you say, she's not likely to throw you over now."
"You don't savvy!" exclaimed Blake. "There on that infernal coast I was the real thing—and the only one, at that. Here I'm just T. Blake, ex-bum, periodic drunkard, all around—"
"Stow that drivel!" ordered Griffith. "What if you were a kid hobo? What are you now?—one of the best engineers in the country; one that's going to make the top in short order. I tell you, you're going to succeed. What's more, Mollie said—"
"Mollie!" repeated Blake softly. "Say, but wasn't she a booster! Had even you beat, hands down. Good Lord, to think that she, of all the little women—! Only thing, typhoid isn't so bad as some things. They don't suffer so much."
"Yes," assented Griffith. "That helps—some—when I get to thinking of it. She went out quietly—wasn't thinking of herself."
"She never did!" put in Blake, "Say, but can't a woman make a heap of difference—when she's the right sort!"
"There was a message for you. She said, almost the last thing: 'Tell Tom not to give up the fight. Tell him,' she said, 'he'll win out, I know he'll win out in the end.'"
"God!" whispered Blake. "She said that?" He bent over and covered his eyes with his hand.
Griffith averted his head and peered at the blueprints on the nearest wall with unseeing eyes. A full minute passed. Keeping his face still averted, he began to tap out the ash and half-smoked tobacco from his pipe.
"H'm—guess you'd better work in a room apart," he remarked in a matter-of-fact tone. "Too much running in and out here. D' you want to start right off?"