"Yes--please sit down. I am very sorry that my maid should have been so
inhospitable." It was not what she had meant to say.
"Oh, that's all right," he replied, easily; "I quite enjoyed it. I must
ask your pardon for coming to you in this abrupt way, but Carlton gave
me a letter to you, and I've lost it." Carlton was the managing editor,
and vague expectations of a summons to the office came into Ruth's mind.
"I'm on The Herald," he went on; "that is, I was, until my eyes gave
out, and then they didn't want me any more. Newspapers can't use anybody
out of repair," he added, grimly.
"I know," Ruth answered, nodding.
"Of course the office isn't a sanitarium, though they need that kind
of an annex; nor yet a literary kindergarten, which I've known it to be
taken for, but--well, I won't tell you my troubles. The oculist said I
must go to the country for six months, stay outdoors, and neither read
nor write. I went to see Carlton, and he promised me a berth in the
Fall--they're going to have a morning edition, too, you know."
Miss Thorne did not know, but she was much interested.
"Carlton advised me to come up here," resumed Winfield. "He said you
were here, and that you were going back in the Fall. I'm sorry I've lost
his letter."
"What was in it?" inquired Ruth, with a touch of sarcasm. "You read it,
didn't you?"
"Of course I read it--that is, I tried to. The thing looked like a
prescription, but, as nearly as I could make it out, it was principally
a description of the desolation in the office since you left it. At the
end there was a line or two commending me to your tender mercies, and
here I am."
"Commending yourself."
"Now what in the dickens have I done?" thought Winfield. "That's it
exactly, Miss Thorne. I've lost my reference, and I'm doing my best to
create a good impression without it. I thought that as long as we were
going to be on the same paper, and were both exiles--"
He paused, and she finished the sentence for him: "that you'd come to
see me. How long have you been in town?"
"'In town' is good," he said. "I arrived in this desolate, God-forsaken
spot just ten days ago. Until now I've hunted and fished every day,
but I didn't get anything but a cold. It was very good, of its kind--I
couldn't speak above a whisper for three days."
She had already recognised him as the young man she saw standing in the
road the day she went to Miss Ainslie's, and mentally asked his
pardon for thinking he was a book-agent. He might become a pleasant
acquaintance, for he was tall, clean shaven, and well built. His hands
were white and shapely and he was well groomed, though not in the least
foppish. The troublesome eyes were dark brown, sheltered by a pair of
tinted glasses. His face was very expressive, responding readily to
every change of mood.