Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/362

 COOL breeze—one of those breezes with which the State of Michigan delights its inhabitants in the month of September—blew through the open bank window behind Gene Goff. Gene filled his lungs with it and turned his face that it might pass across his heated cheeks. He stretched his arms high above his head and yawned…. The gesture was arrested in mid-career, the yawn came to an untimely, unsatisfying end. Gene’s mouth remained open and he all but fell over backward from his tall stool, for entering the bank door were two women, one old, one young and very lovely—and that one, his eyes told him, was Lydia Canfield…. He could not believe his eyes. Even when Lydia approached the grating and smiled as only Lydia could smile, his astonishment was not abated sufficiently to allow of the ordinary function of speech.

“Is Mr. Burke in?” Lydia asked timidly.

Gene closed his mouth with a click and nodded vigorously in the affirmative—jerked his thumb