Dear Ned (it read), I’m sorry to call you home, but I must. I’m laid up with a broken leg—compound fracture. Don’t be alarmed. I’m in no danger of dying. But there are business complications I want to talk over with you—things it’s only fair to you to let you help decide. It may be only for a few weeks. Then you can go back. Let Elenore stay in Paris. It’s all man’s work to be done here. Just responsibilities to be met.
Your father,
John Carrington.
Ned Carrington was turning over the pages of the morning Herald.
“I can catch the train for London in an hour, and sail from Liverpool tomorrow, or—no, here it is—I can leave here in the morning and get a boat at Boulogne. That will be better,” he planned.
“And Velantour?” Elenore questioned.
He threw out his hands despairingly.
“I’ll drive to the station and tell him,” he said. “Then I’ll come back and unpack—and pack.”
“Why can’t I go to dad instead of you?” Elenore demanded.
“Because it’s man’s work to be done,” said Carrington, impatiently. “Don’t argue it. I wish I had your brains for it, though. But it’s me that dad wants, and what he wants he shall have.”
“Two people are going to America who don’t want to go in the least. But they are men, and so, presumably, useful,” she said, spiritedly. “And the one person who would really like to go can’t; because she is a woman, and so, presumably, useless.” She flung her head backward a bit impatiently as she looked at her twin. He was fumbling among the papers on his desk; and the long mirror above it showed his face flushed and perturbed and boyish. Then she caught sight of her own in the glass, and started.
“There isn’t a pen here,” Ned said, irritably. “I must send dad a cable.”