“Won’t be too busy to attend to me, I reckon. Then W. B. Grady”—he was fingering a neatly folded, legal looking document “I hope that Grady hasn’t cleared out from Encampment yet.”
“Not that I’ve heard. In fact I saw him on the street this morning. You seem to have business with everyone in town.”
“Just about hits it, old man. And General John Holden. Ah, yes, that reminds me,” Whitley suspended his sorting of the letters, and looked up. “How’s the college widow, old man?”
Roderick reddened.
“That’s all off,” he answered stiffly.
“I guessed that’s just what would happen. Best so, by a long chalk, So Stella Rain is free again. Guess I’ll stop off on my way home, and take a run to Galesburg. Nice girl, you know, Stella. No saying but I might make an impression now she is”—
“Stella Rain is married,” interrupted Roderick, speaking sharply and shortly.
“You don’t say? Too bad.”
“Happily married, I tell you—to some rich fellow.”
“Oh, then, she threw you over, did she? Ho, ho, ho! But that’s all right, old fellow. Saves all complications. And Gail, how’s Gail? Oh, she’s a pipit pin.