Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/423

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pathy and motherliness triumphing over every other expression upon her face.

Now there wasn't any particular obligation on the part of Robert Mitchell to John Hampstead. Hampstead had merely worked for Mitchell through eight years of faithfulness in small things, which was a way that Hampstead had. But as the Vice-President of the Great Southwestern looked back, those eight years of faithfulness bulked rather large, which, again, was a way that Robert Mitchell had.

As to Bessie! But that is a way that women have. The deeper and the more serious her attachment for John Hampstead had grown, the more guilefully she had concealed that fact from even the suspicion of her parents. Yet now her disguise was penetrated, she sobbed it all out on her mother's shoulder and got the finest, tenderest assurances of sympathy and enthusiastic connivance that could be vouchsafed by one woman to another. The Mitchells were that way. Let hearts and happiness be concerned, and all other considerations of life could ride on the brake-beams.