“As concretely as possible.”
“Then, if you don’t really know the reason why a girl so conscientious as Peace Hughes wouldn’t look at your manuscript again when she was practically left to decide its fate, I think you’d better not go there any more.”
Kane spoke with a seriousness the more impressive because he was so rarely serious, and Ray felt himself reddening under his eye.
“Aren’t you rather enigmatical?” he began.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Kane, and then neither spoke.
Some one knocked at the door. Kane called out, “Come in!” and Mr. Chapley entered.
After he had shaken hands with Kane and made Ray out, and had shaken hands with him, he said, with not more than his usual dejection, “I’m afraid poor David is in fresh trouble, Kane.”
“Yes?” said Kane, and Ray waited breathlessly to hear what the trouble was.
“That wretched son-in-law of his—though I don’t know why I should condemn him—seems to have been somewhere with his children and exposed them to scarlet fever; and he’s down with diphtheritic sore throat himself. Peace has been at home since the trouble declared itself, helping take care of them.”
“Is it going badly with them?” Kane asked.