THE STEADFAST HEART
in a modest place, you know—to help me and to be useful all around—where he could learn the business.”
“It would cause a run on the bank.”
Henry G. unconsciously assumed his most dignified bearing, and tinged it with severity. “It would do no such thing,” he said with decision.
Dave shut his eyes. He considered, considered present and future, considered his own heart and Angus’s happiness. A tear oozed between his closed lids. “For myself—I thank you,” he said. “I’ll put it up to Angus.”
“By all means. Discuss the matter with him. The place, and all of my confidence and backing, will be ready for him when you can spare him.”
Dave watched the erect, stately old man—so aristocratic, so aloof, so lonely in his exclusiveness, yet so kindly, so scrupulously honorable, so sweet and human within the shell which grief had hardened around him. Unhurried, unharried, Henry G. Woodhouse pursued his way through the world, and from the fine calm of his face none might read that his was a well-nigh broken heart. The corroding grief and disgrace of his daughter’s disappearance; the suspense of the mystery surrounding her whereabouts, her fate, her reported death, were always
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