Page:Carroll Rankin--Dandelion Cottage.djvu/290

 264  Black's continued absence, that he would get home sometime, for he had left so much behind him. There was a huge building, in the business portion of the town, whose sign read: "PETER BLACK AND COMPANY." Then, in the prettiest part of the residence district, where the lawns were big and the shrubs were planted scientifically by a landscape gardener and where the hillside bristled with roses, there was a large, handsome stone house that, as everybody knew, belonged to Mr. Black. Although there were industrious clerks at work in the one, and a middle-aged housekeeper, with a furnace-tending, grass-cutting husband equally busy in the other, it was reasonable to suppose that Mr. Black, even if he had no family, would have to return sometime, if only to enjoy his beloved rose-bushes.

Thanks to Mabel's telegram (Bettie's letter, forwarded from Washington, did not reach him for many days) he did come. He had had to stop in Chicago, after all, and