I couldn't neglect you, dear."
She greeted Ellen cordially, who presented Miss Linton. King lost
nothing of his mother's polite scrutiny of the girl, who bore it without
the slightest sign of recognizing it beyond the lowering of her lashes
after the first long look of the tall lady had continued a trifle beyond
the usual limit. Book agent though she might be, Miss Linton's manner
was faultless, a fact King noted with curious pride in his new
friend--whom, though he himself was meeting her for but the second time,
he somehow wanted to stand any social test which might be put upon her.
And he well knew that his lady mother could apply such tests if anybody
could.
In his heart he was saying that it seemed hard luck, he must say
good-bye to Anne Linton in that mother's presence. There was small
chance to make it a leave-taking of even ordinary good fellowship
beneath that dignified, quietly appraising eye, to say nothing of
endowing it with a quality which should in some measure compensate for
the fact that it might be a parting for a long time to come. However
much or little the exchange of notes during these last weeks might have
come to mean to Jordan King, aside from the diversion they had offered
to one sorely oppressed of mind and body, he resented being now forced
to those restrained phrases of farewell which he well knew were the only
ones that would commend him to his mother's approval.
Mrs. Burns and Miss Linton rose to go, summoned by Red Pepper himself,
who was to take them.
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