"Sure is. Just got here. Are you an' the girls O.K.?"
"We're well—fine. Oh, dad …"
"You needn't send the car. I'll hire one."
"Yes—yes—but, dad—Oh, tell me …"
"Wait! I'll be there in five minutes."
She heard him slam up the receiver, and she leaned there, palpitating, with the queer, vacant sounds of the telephone filling her ear.
"Five minutes!" Lenore whispered. In five more minutes she would know. They seemed an eternity. Suddenly a flood of emotion and thought threatened to overwhelm her. Leaving the office, she hurried forth to find her sisters, and not until she had looked everywhere did she remember that they were visiting a girl friend. After this her motions seemed ceaseless; she could not stand or sit still, and she was continually going to the porch to look down the shady lane. At last a car appeared, coming fast. Then she ran indoors quite aimlessly and out again. But when she recognized her father all her outward fears and tremblings vanished. The broad, brown flash of his face was reality. He got out of the car lightly for so heavy a man, and, taking his valise, he dismissed the chauffeur. His smile was one of gladness, and his greeting a hearty roar.
Lenore met him at the porch steps, seeing in him, feeling as she embraced him, that he radiated a strange triumph and finality.
"Say, girl, you look somethin' like your old self," he said, holding her by the shoulders. "Fine! But you're a woman now.… Where are the kids?"
"They're away," replied Lenore.