Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/185

Rh from him. What a fool he had been! "Wilson," "Wilson," he muttered and burst out:

"Of course, there is another Wilson, the tip-top man of the staff. It's the Wilson who's been filling in as chief of the Washington Bureau for six months. I heard somebody say the other night that 'Doc' Wilson was coming back, and was to go on general work again. He must have turned up over Sunday. And that new boy put his note in my box. Well, I am IT."

Young James Arbuthnot Wilson squeezed back a smarting tear. He did not try to fence with this surmise. There was no room for doubt that the kind words and the pleasant outing had been aimed at his high-salaried elder. James Arbuthnot had never clapped eyes on the gifted "Doc" Wilson, whose Washington dispatches had carried no signature and whose distant personality had made no impression upon this wretched understudy of his.

How could the pilgrim muster courage to go back and face the issue? He would