Two vehicles were just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost there sprang a young man swathed in furs.
“Weymore?—No, these are not the Weymore sleighs.”
The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform—a voice so agreeable that, in spite of the words, it fell reassuringly on Faxon’s ears. At the same moment the wandering station-lantern, casting a transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be in the pleasantest harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very young—hardly in the twenties, Faxon thought—but his face, though full of a morning freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine-drawn, as though a vivid spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness. Faxon was perhaps the quicker to notice such delicacies of balance because his own temperament hung on lightly vibrating nerves, which yet, as he believed, would never quite swing him beyond the arc of a normal sensibility.
“You expected a sleigh from Weymore?” the youth continued, standing beside Faxon like a slender column of fur.
Mrs. Culme’s secretary explained his difficulty, and the new-comer brushed it aside with a contemptuous “Oh, Mrs. Culme!” that carried both speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.
“But then you must be——” The youth broke off with a smile of interrogation.
“The new secretary? Yes. But apparently there are no notes to be answered this evening.” Faxon’s laugh deepened the sense of solidarity which had so promptly established itself between the two.
The new-comer laughed also. “Mrs. Culme,” he explained, “was lunching at my uncle’s to-day, and she said you were due this evening. But seven hours is a long time for Mrs. Culme to remember anything.”
“Well,” said Faxon philosophically, “I suppose that’s one of the reasons why she needs a secretary. And I’ve always the inn at Northridge,” he concluded.