Duskin (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill

handed him a paper, neatly typed, which would answer as her credential, and put his fountain pen in his hand.

      He seemed somehow to take heart at the sight of the businesslike sentences. After all, he had trained her, and she was an unusually good secretary. But how would she do when she was on her own? He drew a long sigh that seemed to be rent from the depths of his soul. How could a mere slip of a woman take his place?

      “The papers are there in the top of my bag.” He motioned toward the corner where she had put his things. “You’ll find my wallet in the safe with money and tickets. I have reservations for the six o’clock train. Can you make it?”

      “Yes of course,” she said crisply. “My bag is all packed, you know.” She smiled, and he suddenly remembered, and his face went blank. Perhaps he was not such a heartless old bear after all.

      “Your vacation!” he said. “You can’t go! You mustn’t go of course! I had forgotten.”

      “Nonsense!” said Carol with a quick gulp of renunciation in her throat. “What’s a mere vacation? One can have that any time.”

      As if she hadn’t been waiting for hers a whole lifetime! For the rocks and the sand and the excellent hotel and her pretty new clothes faultless they were, for she had been working on them all winter and the two friends But what folly!

      “You want me to go straight to the building itself and find out with my own eyes just how far things have progressed?” she said in a businesslike voice. “And this Mr. Duskin why shouldn’t I carry this letter to him instead and tell him you sent me? Of course, I know you were intending to stop over in Chicago and expected the letter to get there ahead of you, but that won’t be necessary now, will it? I can wire the Chicago people to meet me at the station with the papers and ask those questions you had me write out. That will save a whole day.”

      He looked at her wonderingly. She did know what she was doing even if she was only a woman, and a young, pretty one at that.

      After all he found he needed to give her very few directions. Armed with money, tickets, reservations, and the other necessary papers, she stood aside as the orderlies from the ambulance came to take her employer downstairs, and her eyes filled with unaccountable tears.

      “Good-bye!” said Fawcett, suddenly rousing and putting out his hand quite humanly. “I know it’s a raw deal for you. It’s pretty nervy of you to offer to go, but I suppose really the game’s up!” He dropped back with a strange hopeless expression as if the worst had come.

      “Oh, no!” cried Carol brightly, suddenly anxious to lift that burden from his tired face. “The game’s not up at all. I’m in it to win! You’ll see me coming back with flying colors to help you get well!”

      He cast a sudden, unexpected smile up at her, strangely sweet on the harsh old face that was gray with pain now, as if he had cast away all pretenses.

      “Good-bye, little girl,” he said gently. “Thank you!”

      They carried him out on a stretcher to the elevator. The doctor lingered an instant.

      “You’re a good little sport!” he said. “Keep the wires hot with comforting messages home and we’ll pull him through. Let me know if you have any difficulties, and if you need to ask him any questions, wire them to me, not to him! I can keep my mouth shut as well as the next one, so you needn’t be afraid.”

      They were off, and suddenly Carol felt very old and sorry, as if she were going to cry, and very much weighted down with care and responsibility. Here but an hour before she had been reviling Mr. Fawcett for being cross and bearish and hard, though all the time she knew he was carrying an immense burden, and now here she was with the tables turned, her vacation gone, and in its place Mr. Fawcett’s burden thrust without warning upon her young shoulders. And besides that burden, she carried new knowledge that she had overheard from the two men. Then suddenly she remembered them and looked around for them, but the office boy said they were gone.

      As Carol turned to go back to her inner office, she heard the elevator stop on its way up, but she did not turn back to see who was getting off.

      Later, when she came out with a sheaf of papers for the treasurer, she had a vague impression of two figures, one tall and one short, moving along in the far end of the big room, but when she passed her hand over her eyes wearily and looked again there was no one in the room but the regular men at their desks, hard at work as usual.

      If there were only someone to whom she might turn now for a strong word of guidance and encouragement before she went out alone on this strange, wild errand! Or, perhaps if she knew God, the way her mother did, it might help. She felt strangely alone.

      CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      Somehow all the things got done, and Carol found herself seated in the sleeper car with a whole three minutes to spare before the train left.

      She was breathless and throbbing with excitement. She felt as if she had been running a race with time and was wound up so tight that it hurt her heart to stop.

      Her mother and her fourteen-year-old sister had come down to see her off, and they lingered, wistful and apprehensive, loath to have her go. There had been so little time to explain to them, and they were still indignant over the idea of her giving up her beautiful vacation for this wild business trip into an unknown West filled with no telling what awful possibilities.

      “Is he paying you extra for this?” asked Betty sternly, fixing her sister with a pair of very young, very modern blue eyes. “Because if he isn’t I shouldn’t go a step, even now!”

      “Betty, you don’t understand,” said Carol. “It wasn’t a time for talking about pay. I tell you Mr. Fawcett was hurt. He was very ill! The doctor felt it might be quite serious. He will pay me of course.”

      “Well, I should sue him if he didn’t,” asserted Betty indignantly. “Your lovely vacation!”

      “Oh, I may get a vacation later,” said Carol carelessly. Although the thought of her postponed vacation still hurt terribly.

      “Yes, a vacation after everybody has left and you’re the only pebble on the beach, the last rose of summer! I declare I think it’s the limit!”

      “Don’t make it any harder than it is, Betty dear!” pleaded Carol. “Come, perk up. I may be home before long.”

      “Yes, Betty, don’t waste time blaming Carol,” said the mother. “We must go in a minute, and there are so many things I wanted to say. You will be careful, won’t you? Going off into the wilds ”

      “Oh, Mother! It can’t be very wild where they are putting up an eleven-story building!”

      “Well, I suppose that is so,” said the troubled mother. “But you a young woman alone! And you’re so good looking, Carol. Going among a lot of strange men!”

      “They won’t be any different from the men in our office, Mother. They’re just men, you know. And I’ll wear a veil if you like, or dye my cheeks with iodine, if you say so!” Carol tried to summon a mischievous grin, in spite of the sudden misgivings that had come to her as she entered the sleeper and realized that she was really going.

      “Now, Carol, do be serious!” pleaded her mother. “This is a dreadful world ”

      “Oh, no, Mother! It’s a pretty good world! Wait till I get back and tell you all the wonders of the wild and woolly West beginning with Chicago. Just think of it! I have to meet the Chicago representative and talk turkey to him! I telegraphed him in Mr. Fawcett’s name, ‘Accident prevents my coming. Meet my representative, C. W. Berkley, tomorrow on train No. 10 and give her all details of situation.’ Why, Mother, I expect to be carried around on a throne!”

      “Mercy!”