Good-bye, good luck--and don't forget my errand." She hung
up and sat at the telephone for a moment, dimpled chin in dimpled
hand, her glance wandering through the window and far away across the
roofs of the town to where the smoke-stack of Cardigan's mill cut the
sky-line. "How I'd hate you if I could handle you!" she murmured.
Following this exasperating but illuminating conversation with
Shirley Sumner over the telephone, Bryce Cardigan was a distressed
and badly worried man. However, Bryce was a communicant of a very
simple faith--to wit, that one is never whipped till one is counted
out, and the first shock of Shirley's discovery having passed, he
wasted no time in vain repinings but straightway set himself to
scheme a way out of his dilemma.
For an hour he sat slouched in his chair, chin on breast, the while
he reviewed every angle of the situation.
He found it impossible, however, to dissociate the business from the
personal aspects of his relations with Shirley, and he recalled that
she had the very best of reasons for placing their relations on a
business basis rather than a sentimental one. He had played a part in
their little drama which he knew must have baffled and infuriated
her. More, had she, in those delightful few days of their early
acquaintance, formed for him a sentiment somewhat stronger than
friendship (he did not flatter himself that this was so), he could
understand her attitude toward him as that of the woman scorned.
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