Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/215

204 Letty laughed and slipped out of the room.

"What gorgeous hair!" Lydia said to Floyd. She lifted the little boy up on her lap and smiled at him and shook her head and stroked his cheek. "Is n't that woman the happy looking soul!" she added.

Floyd suddenly caught a pathos in the exclamation, and in the wistful and tender look in Lydia's eyes as she played with the little boy. It occurred to him for the first time that her happiness with Stewart was not complete, and he felt a pang of sympathy and sorrow. What a mother she would make, he thought, and how truly sad if children should be denied her!

The little boy slid down from her knee when his mother reëntered the room.

"He's shy of strangers," Letty explained, caressing his head. "Run upstairs to Grandma, Hughie.—Is n't it too bad, Mr. Halket," she said, turning to Floyd with her bright smile, "that we did n't have this house when you were boarding with us? My! you'd have been so much more comfortable! And"—her eyes twinkled—"the bathroom here is enough to make a person sing for joy—really sing," she added mischievously.

Floyd laughed. "Mrs. Lee doesn't know about that joke," he said. "If you don't mind, I'll leave you to explain it to her. Good-by, Letty. I'll call for you at the club in half an hour, Lydia."

At the company's offices important matters engaged his attention. A new wage-scale had to be prepared and submitted to the men to sign.

"It's going to cause trouble," Gregg said. "Especially if you're still of a mind to promote Farrell and make him foreman."

Floyd folded up the superintendent's schedule and put it in his pocket. "I'll study this," he said, "and go over it with you in a day or two. What's the trouble about Farrell?"

"Nothing; he's a good man; that's it; he's too good.