He tiptoed into the hall. There was not a sound in the house. A minute later the outer doors closed behind him, gently. He was out in the cold, bitter night, plowing his way through snowdrifts three and four feet deep, bound for the hotel next door, the nearest place of refuge.
In the office he left a call for seven o'clock. Not in ten years had he done anything so amazing.
"She helps to support a family--a helpless father and two small sisters," he said to himself as he crept into bed. "But, it wouldn't be the same thing supporting my governor. _I should say not!_" Later on, very drowsily: "I was sure I had seen her before. Little Mary Pembroke! How I adored her! But it seems to me her hair was yellow then. It's black now. Still, I dare say that's better than if it had been black then and yellow now. Seven o'clock! What an ungodly hour to get up. But I'll have to get used to it."
Miss Pembroke resisted the desire to look after him from the front window. She couldn't bear the thought of scraping the frost from the window pane with her fingernails, for one thing; for another, he might take it into his head to look back.
So she went to bed, thinking of him--as she had been doing for an hour or more before his amazing second appearance.
"He was such a shy boy," she reflected. "But he was the best looking thing. Dear me, how long ago it seems! And those silly love letters I wrote to him and never mailed. What funny things children are!"
At nine o'clock the next morning she was called to the telephone. She was at breakfast, and her bag was ready for the train. An early glance from the window had filled her with misgivings. The street was absolutely impassable, it seemed to her.
"I won't talk to the reporters," she said to Stokes.
"It isn't a reporter, Miss. It's a gentleman."
"Say to him, Stokes, that I have gone," she said, after a moment.
She pondered. "Yes, Stokes. Ask him to hold the wire."
"Yes, while you run to the door to call me back."
A moment later she was in the telephone room, quite out of breath.
"Who is it?" she called. She compelled him to repeat the name four times. Eventually he got her serious attention.
"No trains until this afternoon?" she cried despairingly. "Why, the children will be at the station to meet me."