“Would you—will you do me the very great favor of going to his office and asking him a question for me? I’ll give the drawing to my sister.”
His face fell. But he gathered himself together and said politely that he was quite at my service.
“I want to know whether he has had a design for a yacht sent to him from Palmyra; and, oh, I so much want to know whether if he has, it’s the one he’s going to accept!”
His face kindled sympathetically. “He—he draws, too! I understand,” he said. “You must know how glad I shall be if I can be of any service,” he added, heartily. “I’ll find out everything I can; but I warn you that Mr. Solomon Salter is called a dreadful old curmudgeon.”
He was so eager and so boyish that I could have defied any one to help liking him at that moment, even remembering how meanly he had behaved toward Dave. He seemed, however, to have a real desire to make amends to Dave—or to Dave’s sister.
The afternoon slipped away and he didn’t return to give an account of his interview with Mr. Solomon Salter. I had not told Octavia or Estelle, partly because I felt that my fancy that it was Dave who had sent the design had very slight foundation, partly because I feared they would strongly disapprove of my asking a favor of Ned Carruthers—as, indeed, I was inclined to do myself now that I had time for reflection.
We were on board the steamer; the shrill whistles had sounded and the bell had rung that was its signal for departure. We were about to slip away from the great, strange, homesick city, with its bull of Bashan roar; the beautiful blue ocean that stretched almost to our dear Palmyran shores invited us. But I hung regretfully over the railing and hoped against hope.
There he was! He had boasted of his sprinting, perhaps that exercise had something to do with the headlong rush with which he came down the wharf dashing aside porters and cabmen!
“It’s Ned Carruthers!” exclaimed Alice Yorke. “And how he looks! He’s all covered with dust.”
His foot was on the gangplank as the porter started to move it.