"I was wondering about that," he replied.
"Yes, I got it just before I started," said Kate. "Are you
surprised to see me?"
"No," he answered. "After last year, we figured you might come
the last of this week or the first of next, so we got your room
ready Monday."
"Thank you," said Kate. "It's very clean and nice."
"I hope soon to be able to offer you such a room and home as you
should have," he said. "I haven't opened my office yet. It was
late and hot when I got home in June and Mother was fussing about
this winter -- that she had no garden and didn't do her share at
Aunt Ollie's, so I have farmed most of the summer, and lived on
hope; but I'll start in and make things fly this fall, and by
spring I'll be sailing around with a horse and carriage like the
best of them. You bet I am going to make things hum, so I can
offer you anything you want."
"You haven't opened an office yet?" she asked for the sake of
saying something, and because a practical thing would naturally
suggest itself to her.
"I haven't had a breath of time," he said in candid disclaimer.
"Why don't you ask me what's the matter?"
"Didn't figure that it was any of my business in the first place,"
he said, "and I have a pretty fair idea, in the second."
"But how could you have?" she asked in surprise.
"When your sister wouldn't give me your address, she hinted that
you had all the masculine attention you cared for; then Tilly
Nepple visited town again last week and she had been sick and
called Dr. Gray. She asked him about you, and he told what I fine
time you had at Chautauqua and Chicago, with the rich new friends
you'd made. I was watching for you about this time, and I just
happened to be at the station in Hartley last Saturday when you
got off the train with your fine gentleman, so I stayed over with
some friends of mine, and I saw you several times Sunday. I saw
that I'd practically no chance with you at all; but I made up my
mind I'd stick until I saw you marry him, so I wrote just as I
would if I hadn't known there was another man in existence."
"That was a very fine letter," said Kate.
"It is a very fine, deep, sincere love that I am offering you,"
said George Holt. "Of course I could see prosperity sticking out
all over that city chap, but it didn't bother me much, because I
knew that you, of all women, would judge a man on his worth. A
rising young professional man is not to be sneered at, at least
until he makes his start and proves what he can do. I couldn't
get an early start, because I've always had to work, just as
you've seen me last summer and this, so I couldn't educate myself
so fast, but I've gone as fast and far as I could."