"You spend a lot of time there, don't you, William?" "Sh--sh--Don't be sleuthing around, Lucien, you might find out something, and I'm afraid the blow would kill you. Anyway, I asked my Pa about this love business, and he kinder laughs, and looks at Ma, and she laughs too, like when she's pleased about something, and they kisses each other right there, and Pa says, 'It'll come to you some day, boy, please God, and when it comes----' and then he kisses Ma again and don't finish what he's started to say, and I don't ask him. I know enough anyway to know when Pa ain't going to be no mark for a buncher questions, but it's got me going. There's Miss Whimple loved a fellow when she's young, and he gets carved up by some black fellows in a desert around Egypt somewhere----" "The Soudan." "That's the name; who told you?" "My father's brother is a soldier, and he fought the Dervishes." "That's the bunch. Say, you certainly know something, Lucien, sometimes. So, Miss Whimple don't get married, and it's the icy mitt for anybody that asked her; and plenty did." "She's a funny old----" "You say a word about her, Lucien Torrance, that ain't nice, and I'll knock the head off'n you. She's--she's--well, there ain't another like her except Ma." "I wasn't going to say anything----" began Lucien. William cut him short. "You started wrong then," he said, "that's all there is to it; and now what about your boss?" "Mine?" "Yes; he's going crazy about a girl." "He's what?" "You heard me; you know you did. Say, he can't sleep nights thinking of that girl, by the looks of him, and he don't see her more'n seven times a week, and she's just as looney about him too; but she ain't showing it much." "I don't believe it!" "There you are again, and a lot of this thing going on under your very nose. Say, you're sticking so close to business you can't see a blame thing but your work. Do you ever have a day dream, Lucien?" "I'm too busy." "That's it, busy--too busy to have day dreams. Gee, I don't know what I'd do if I never had 'em. Say----" Whimple entered at this moment with Simmons. The lawyer was urging the architect to "buck up." William smiled. "The girl loves you," Whimple said, in an undertone, but not pitched low enough, for the two boys heard it quite distinctly. William winked at Lucien, and the latter blushed. Simmons refused to be comforted, and passed into his own office, melancholy settled heavily on his usually bright face, and Lucien followed him. "William," said Whimple a few minutes later, "will you please take this letter to Mrs. Stewart, and wait for an answer?"