“That depends. I was with Rondell’s boy in Cuba when he had the fever, and he’s always said—but that’s neither here nor there. Apart from that, they’ve had their eye on your husband lately. You can’t hide the quality of a man like him, Mrs. Alexander; it shows in a hundred ways that he doesn’t think of. They have had dealings with him, though he doesn’t know it—it’s been through agents. Mr. Warren, one of their best men, has, it seems, taken a fancy to him. I shouldn’t wonder if they’d take over the typometer as it stands, and work Alexander in with it. If Rondell Brothers really take up anyone——!” Girard did not need to finish. Even Lois and Dosia had heard of Rondell Brothers, the great firm that was known from one end of the country to the other—a commercial house whose standing was as firm, as unquestioned, as the Bank of England, and almost as conservative. Apart from this, its reputation was unique. The house was more than a commercial establishment: it was an institution, in which for three generations the firm known as Rondell Brothers had carried on, in the conduct of their business—and carried to high advantage—the principles of personal honor and honesty and fair dealing. No boy or man of good character, intelligence, and industry was ever connected with Rondell’s without its making for his advancement; to get a position there was to be assured of his future. Their young men stayed with them, and rose steadily higher as they stayed, or went out from them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The number of young firms whom Rondell Brothers had started and made, and whose profit also afterwards profited them, were more than had ever been counted. They were never deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing their own kind. No firm was keener. Straight on the nail themselves, they exacted the same quality in others. What they traded in needed no other guaranty than the name of Rondell. If Rondell Brothers took Justin’s affairs in hand! Lois felt a hope that sent life through her veins. “Oh, let us hurry home!” she pleaded, and tried to quicken her pace, though it was Girard who supported her, else she must have fallen, while Dosia slipped a little behind, still trying to keep her place by his side, so that she might meet his look when he turned to her. “You’re so tired,” he whispered, with a break in his voice, “and I can’t help you!” and she tried to beat back that dear pity and longing with her comforting “No, no, no! I’m not really tired”; her voice thrilled with life, though her feet stumbled. In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch, they two were so heart-close—so heavenly, so fulfillingly near! Once he whispered in a yearning distress, “Why are you crying?” And she answered through those welling tears: “I’m only crying because I’m so glad you’re here!”