How interested, for example, he had been in Marcia; in learning she had been married and now lived a widow in the old Daniels Homestead! And what a host of inquiries he had made about Jason--the sort of man he was and how long ago he had died!
Sylvia had not been able to answer all his questions, but of course she had asserted that Marcia had adored her husband because--well, not so much because she actually knew it, as because widows always did. Certainly Marcia had declared she loved the Homestead so deeply she never intended to leave it, and was not that practically the same thing as saying she loved Jason, too?
Anyway, how she had felt toward him was not really a matter of any great importance now because he was dead.
The thing that really mattered was Mr. Heath's interest in her--Sylvia; in her trip East and her description of Alton City, the little mid-western town which was her home. How he had laughed at her rebellion at being a school-teacher, and how insidiously he had hinted she might not always be one! And when she had tossed her curls at him as she often tossed them at Billie Sparks, the soda fountain clerk, how cleverly he had remarked that sunlight was especially welcome on a grey day.
Oh, he knew what to say--knew much better than Billie Sparks or even Horatio Fuller, the acknowledged beau of the town. In fact he made both of them seem quite commonplace--even Hortie. Fancy it!
Probably that was because he had traveled.
Apparently he had been almost everywhere--except to Alton City. Odd he should never have been there when he had visited just about every other corner, both of America and of Europe. Not that he had deliberately said so. He was far too modest for that.
It was while trying to find out where his home was that she had stumbled upon the information.
And come to think of it, she did not know now where he lived, she suddenly remembered.
At the time she thought he had named the place; but she realized on reviewing the conversation that he had not. In fact, he had not told her much of anything about himself. It had all been about surfboating in the Pacific; skiing at Lake Placid and St. Moritz; climbing the Alps; motoring in Brittany.
She actually did not know whether he had a father or a mother; a brother or a sister.