"Everything is ready, sir."
"That"s fine. Now I"m going to pack."
His packing finished, Don went downstairs with still an hour or more on his hands before train-time. But he did not care to go anywhere. He was absolutely contented here. He was content merely to wander from room to room. He sat down at the piano in the dark, and for a long while played to her--played to her just the things he knew she would like.
It was half-past eleven before he left the house, and then he went almost reluctantly. She was more here than anywhere in the world except where he was going. He found himself quite calm about her here.
The moment he came out on the street again he noticed a difference.
His own phrase came back to frighten him:--
"She"d care like that--if she cared at all."
Supposing that after he found her, she did not care?
At the station he wondered if it were best to wire her, but decided against it. She might run away. It was never possible to tell what a woman might do, and Sally Winthrop was an adept at concealing herself.
He remembered that period when, although he had been in the same office with her, she had kept herself as distant as if across the ocean. She had only to say, "Not at home," and it was as if she said, "I am not anywhere."
He went to his berth at once, and had, on the whole, a bad night of it. He asked himself a hundred questions that he could not answer--that Sally Winthrop alone could answer. Though it was only lately that he had prided himself on knowing her desires in everything, he was forced to leave all these questions unanswered.
At ten the next morning he took the train for Portland. At two he was on the train for Brenton and hurrying through a strange country to her side.
When he reached Brenton he was disappointed not to find her when he stepped from the train. The station had been so closely identified with her through the long journey that he had lost sight of the fact that it existed for any other purpose. But only a few station loafers were there to greet him, and they revealed but an indifferent interest. He approached one of them.
"Can you tell me where Miss Winthrop is stopping?"
The man looked blank.
"No one of that name in this town," he finally answered.
"Isn"t this Brenton?"
"It"s Brenton, right enough."
"Then she"s here," declared Don.
"Is she visitin"?" inquired the man.
Don nodded.
"A cousin, or something."
A second man spoke up:--
"Ain"t she the one who"s stopping with Mrs. Halliday?"
"Rather slight, with brown eyes," volunteered Don.
"Dunno the color of her eyes," answered the first man, with a wink at the second. "But thar"s some one stoppin" thar. Been here couple days or so."
"That"s she," Don decided.
He drew a dollar bill from his pocket.
"I want one of you to take a note to her from me."
He wrote on the back of a card:--
I"m at the station. I must see you at once.
DON.
"Take that to her right away and bring me an answer," he ordered.
The man took both bill and card and disappeared.
CHAPTER XXIX
MOSTLY SALLY
It was an extremely frightened girl who within five minutes appeared upon the station platform. She was quite out of breath, for she had been running. As he came toward her with outstretched hands, she stared at him from head to foot, as if to make sure he was not minus an arm or a leg.
"Won"t you even shake hands with me?" he asked anxiously.
"You--you gave me such a fright," she panted.
"How?"
"I thought--I thought you must have been run over."
He seemed rather pleased.
"And you cared?" he asked eagerly.
She was fast recovering herself now.
"Well, it wouldn"t be unnatural to care, would it, if you expected to find a friend all run over?"
"And, now that you find I"m not a mangled corpse, you don"t care at all."
Of course he wouldn"t choose to be a corpse, because he would not have been able to enjoy the situation; but, on the whole, he was sorry that he did not have a mangled hand or something to show. Evidently his whole hand did not interest her--she had not yet offered to take it.
"How in the world did you get here?" she demanded.
"I took the train."