He left
the house as soon as his breakfast was eaten, and he did not come home
to luncheon--a circumstance which irritated Hazel, since it was one of
those rare days when she herself lunched at home. Late in the
afternoon he telephoned briefly that he would dine downtown. And when
he did return, at nine or thereabouts in the evening, he clamped a
cigar between his teeth, and fell to work covering a sheet of paper
with interminable rows of figures.
Hazel had worried over the possibility of his having had another tilt
with the Scotch and sodas. He relieved her of that fear, and she
restrained her curiosity until boredom seized her. The silence and the
scratching of his pen began to grate on her nerves.
"What is all the clerical work about?" she inquired. "Reckoning your
assets and liabilities?"
Bill smiled and pushed aside the paper.
"I'm going to promote a mining company," he told her, quite casually.
"It has been put up to me as a business proposition--and I've got to
the stage where I have to do _something_, or I'll sure have the
Willies."
She overlooked the latter statement; it conveyed no special
significance at the time. But his first statement opened up
possibilities such as of late she had sincerely hoped would come to
pass, and she was all interest.
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