"Henery is his front name," admitted Scorch, rumpling his red top-knot. "But I guess I'd better ask first if he'll have you in."
"Just tell him it's me, please," said Nancy, faintly.
"Nancy Nelson. He'll know. I'm his ward."
"Never knowed he had one. So he is yer guardeen?" grunted the red-haired boy, unwinding his legs.
The girl thought she had chatted quite enough with this very bold youth, so made no further reply.
"Ain't he the sly one?" proceeded "Scorch" O'Brien, shaking his head. "Him a guardeen--an' I never knowed it before."
Evidently the fact that anything of such moment had escaped him rasped the temper of the boy. He went off muttering, and came back again, in a minute, grinning.
"Say! he must have robbed you of the estate. It sure scared him when I announced your name. Never seen him turn a hair before; but he wasn't looking for no 'Nancy Nelson' ter come up and confront him like this."
Nancy, rather offended at this "fresh" youth, swept by him through the gateway and approached the door to which she had seen the flame-haired "Scorch" go in his quest of Mr. Gordon.
Yes! "Mr. Henry Gordon" was painted upon the door. She opened it slowly and looked in.
There was a great, broad table-desk, piled high with books and papers--a veritable wilderness of books and papers. In a broad armchair, with his back to the door, sat "Old Gudgeon," as "Scorch" had disrespectfully called Mr. Henry Gordon.
He was as broad as his chair. Indeed, he seemed to have been forced into it between the arms, by hydraulic pressure. Nancy did not see how he ever _could_ get out of it!
He had enormous shoulders, fairly "humped" with layers of fat. His head was thrust forward as he wrote, and his shaven neck was pink, and bare, and overlapped his collar in a most astonishing way.
"Ahem!" said Nancy, clearing her throat a little. She had come inside and closed the door, and it seemed that Mr. Gordon was giving her no attention.
Then she chanced to look up and, on the wall beyond the desk, was a broad mirror tilted so that the lawyer needed but to raise his eyes to see reflected in the glass all that went on behind him.
And in that glass Nancy got her first glimpse of Henry Gordon's face.
It was really something more than a glimpse. The lawyer was evidently staring at her--had been doing so for some seconds. His great, broad, unwrinkled countenance seemed to have paled on her first appearance, for now the color was washing back into it in a wave of faint pink--a ruddy hue that was natural to so full-bodied a man.