"The office," said Ellen.
"There won't be no office in New York nor anywhere else, when you lose Lew. You know that," returned Di, narrowing her eyes. "You know Lew liked you. What you doin', Ellen?"
"I'm going to take over the New York office, under Mr. Armiston," Ellen re-declared, too emphatically.
Jay heard of it, not from his father, but through Lowry, and interpreted it without reference to Lew. He remembered how he had, himself, delivered Ralph's original request for her and that he had urged her to accept the place, never wanting her to go. Since then, how affairs had flown for her and for him!
Within the Ellen of the office, who awaited him calmly (outwardly) at the end of the day, was the bare-armed, brown little girl who had bent, looking for him under the Arletta's sail, and had cried out in her relief at sight of him. Within, was she who had brought her boat close to let him leap aboard and had freed the sheet when he was beside her; she of the blue gingham and the big strawberry bowl, of the brown, smooth shoulders and brown, smooth legs and brown little feet, who had swum with him and climbed up on the little boat and dived; she of the afternoon talk under the trees and of the dance of the dead in the sky and of the dark by the road before the motor-car came.
To her, he could not cease to be the very tired boy who had jumped at sight of her and forgotten everything and everyone else but her; never, never could he cease
