"Sure—of course; only Mr. Lane thought—"
"Get in, won't you, and come with me," Isabelle said, interrupting him, and then as the young man shyly took the vacant seat, she asked:—
"Aren't you Teddy Bliss? … I haven't seen you for—years!" She added with a smile, "Since you played baseball in your father's back yard. How is your mother?"
It gave her a sense of age to find the son of her old friend in this smiling young man. Life was getting on apace…. The cab made its way slowly into the heart of the city, and they talked of the old times when the Blisses had been neighbors across the alley from the Prices. Isabelle wished to ask the young man about the trial. The New York paper that she had seen on the train had only a short account. But she hesitated to show her ignorance, and Teddy Bliss was too much abashed before the handsome wife of his "boss" to offer any information. Finally Isabelle asked:—
"Is the trial nearly over?"
"Pretty near the end. Cross-examination to-day. When I left, Mr. Lane was on the stand. Then come the arguments and the judge's charge, and it goes to the jury."
And he added with irresistible impulse:—
"It's a great case, Mrs. Lane! … When our lawyers get after that district attorney, he won't know what's happened to him…. Why, the road's secured the best legal talent that ever argued a case in this district, so they tell me. That man Brinkerhoff is a corker!"
"Indeed!" Isabelle replied, smiling at the young man's enthusiasm for the scrap. To him it was all a matter of legal prowess with victory to the heavy battalions.
"Federal court-rooms are in here temporarily,—crowded out of the federal building," her companion explained as the cab stopped before a grimy office building.