“You are preoccupied, Mr. Grant.”
“Oh, Miss Bruce, I beg your pardon. I am glad to see you.” Even at that moment he had been thinking of Zen, and perhaps he put more cordiality into his words than he intended. But he had grown to have considerable regard, on her own account, for this unusual girl who was not afraid of him. He had found that she was what he called “a good head.” She could take a detached view; she was absolutely fair; she was not easily flustered.
Her step had fallen into swing with his.
“You do not often visit our part of the city,” she essayed.
“You live here?”
“Near by. Will you come and see?”
He turned with her at a corner, and they went up a narrow street lying deep in dead leaves. Friendly domestic glimpses could be caught through unblinded windows.
“This is our home,” she said, stopping before a little gate. Grant’s eye followed the pathway to a cottage set back among the trees. “I live here with my sister and brother and mother. Father is dead,” she went on hurriedly, as though wishing to place before him a quick digest of the family affairs, “and we keep up the home by living on with mother as boarders; that is, Grace and I do. Hubert is still in high school. Won’t you come in?”
He followed her up the path and into a little hall, lighted only by chance rays falling through a half-opened door. She did not switch on the current, and Grant was aware of a comfortable sense of her nearness, quite distinct from any office experience, as she took his hat. In the living-room her mother received him with visible surprise. She was not old, but widowhood and the cares of a young family had whitened her hair before its time.
“We are glad to see you, Mr. Grant,” she said. “It is an unexpected pleasure. Big business men do not often—”