Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/96

 ing to a woman as a man friend—a real friend with whom she can talk out her troubles and to whom⸺”

“I hope that you will be able to feel that I’m such a friend, Miss Pomeroy,” he broke in.

“That’s the singular part of it, don’t you know,” she said smiling. “I’ve felt —that you were from the moment I saw you at my apartment—even before you spoke a word.” He smiled, much gratified.

This was a discerning girl, he decided. She knew a regular fellow when she saw one. A real he-man! One of nature’s noblemen! True-blue. No, he was not conceited nor egotistical beyond the ordinary run of males—when you consider that all of them are like that. Although a man would never admit that he thinks such thoughts as the above, yet all of them do. There are few men who don’t consider that they are the salt of the earth and nature’s noblemen—and there are none who would not be grateful to a woman for being discerning enough to perceive that important fact.

“I suppose I ought to begin at the beginning,” she said, and he nodded. “Though we’re having a peep at the end right now⸺”

“The way some women read a book, eh?” be commented.

“Well, not all. Some don’t read—they live. The beginning,” she went on, “is my father. Probably you know of him—he was a racing man. That is, he bred horses, and he raced them—going around the country to wherever there was a meet. You can’t have a home—in the true sense of the word—when your only living relative is always off somewhere at the other end of the country, so we lived, when we weren’t separated, in a small apartment hotel here in the city. We had a place in Virginia, too, near Hampton—but the build-