AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
"That's twice you've made a wrong play, Betty," observed Mr.
Littell. "What lies heavy on your mind this evening?"
Betty blushed, and attempted to put her mind more on the game. She
was playing checkers with Mr. Littell, whose injured foot still kept
him a prisoner most of the time, and she had played badly all the
evening, she knew. Truth to tell, she was thinking about her uncle
and wondering over and over why she did not hear from him.
After the rubber was played and the other girls who had been around
the piano, singing, had gone out to get something to eat, for the
maids had the evening off, Betty spoke to her host.
"I suppose you think I'm foolish," she ventured; "but I am really
worried about Uncle Dick now. He has never answered the telegram and
the two letters I've written. His Philadelphia lawyer writes that he
is waiting to hear from him. He seems to have dropped out of the
world. Do you think he may be sick in some hospital and not able to
communicate with us?"
"That's a possibility," admitted Mr. Littell soberly. "But I tell
you honestly, Betty, and not simply to relieve your mind, that I
consider it a very remote one. Business men, especially men who
travel a great deal, as you tell me your uncle does, seldom are
without somewhere on their person, their names and addresses, and
directions about what is to be done in case of sickness or accident.
I never travel without such a card. Ten to one, if your uncle were
ill or injured, his lawyer would have been notified immediately."
A weight of anxiety slipped from Betty's heart, for she immediately
recognized the sound common sense in this argument. Still, something
else was troubling her.
"Don't you think," she began again bravely, "that I had better go to
Pineville? The quarantine is lifted, I hear, and the Bensingers will
take me in till I can hear from Uncle Dick. You and Mrs. Littell and
the girls have been so lovely to me, but--but--" her voice trailed off.
Mr. Littell leaned back in his chair and lit a fresh cigar.
"Well, now of course," he said slowly, "if you feel that you want to
go to Pineville, we really have no right to say anything. But if I
were you, I'd stay right here. Your uncle may be intending to come
back to Washington. In any case, he will address his letter to you
here. Of that much we are certain. You'll hear more quickly if you
don't move about. Besides, there is that Henderson lad. I'm counting
on making his acquaintance. He's likely to bob up any day--though I
didn't mean to pun. If you want my advice, Betty, it is to stay here
quietly with us and wait as patiently as you can. We like to have
you, you know that. You're not a stranger, but a friend."
He went on to explain to her in his quiet, even, matter-of-fact way,
that to the disturbed girl was inexpressibly soothing, his belief
that her uncle was on an exploration trip for oil and might easily
find a month's accumulation of mail awaiting him on his return.
"It's only here, in the heart of civilization, that we think we
can't live without four mails a day," Mr. Littell concluded. "I've
been out of touch with a post-office for three weeks at a time
myself, and our sailors, you know, often go much longer without
letters."
On one particularly lovely morning the four girls, with Mrs.
Littell, started off on the pleasant mission of seeing the White
House. Betty's and Libbie's acquaintance with it was confined solely
to the glimpses they had had from the street, but Louise and Bobby
had attended several New Year's receptions and had shaken hands with
the President.
The party spent a delightful morning, visiting the famous East Room,
admiring the full length portraits of George and Martha Washington,
about which latter the story is told that Mrs. Dolly Madison cut it
from its frame to save it from the approaching enemy in 1814. They
were also fortunate to find a custodian taking sightseers through the
other official apartments so that they saw more than the casual
visitor does in one visit. They visited in turn, the Green Room, the
Red Room, and the Blue Room, saw the state dining-room with its
magnificent shining table about which it was easy to imagine famous
guests seated, and enjoyed a peep into the conservatory at the end of
the corridor. They did not go up to the executive offices on the
second floor, knowing that probably a crowd was before them and that
an opportunity to see the President on the streets of the city was
likely to present itself.
"Well, I shouldn't want to live there," sighed Betty, as they came
down the steps, "It is very grand and very stately, but not much like
a home. I suppose, though, the private rooms of the President and his
family are cozy, if one could see them."
"Beyond a doubt," agreed Mrs. Littell.
They lunched at one of the large hotels, and afterward Mrs. Littell
had a club engagement. The girls, she announced, might spend the
afternoon as they chose, and she would pick them all up at five
o'clock with Carter and the car.
"Esther and I want to see 'The Heart of June,'" announced Libbie,
who found romance enough to satisfy her in the motion-pictures.
Louise was interested, too; but Betty had promised to take some
papers for Mr. Littell and see that they reached an architect in one
of the nearby office buildings. Bobby elected to go with her, and
they decided that, that errand accomplished, they might do a little
shopping and meet the others at the theater door at five o'clock.
"Mr. Waters won't be in till three o'clock," announced the freckle-faced
office boy who met them in the outer office of the architect's suite.
"Then we'll have to come back," decided Betty, glancing at her
watch. "It is just two now."
"You can leave anything with me," said the boy politely. "I'll see
that he gets it as soon as he comes in."
"Yes, do, Betty," urged Bobby. "Dad would say it was all right to
leave that envelope of papers. They're not terribly important."
"We can do our shopping and then come back," insisted Betty, to the
evident disgust of Bobby and the hardly less concealed impatience of
the office boy.
"Why wouldn't you leave 'em?" demanded Bobby, when they were once
more in the street.
"Dad hasn't any secret service stuff, I'm sure of that. Now we have
to come all the way back here again, and that means hurrying through
our shopping."
"You needn't come," said Betty mildly. "Your father asked me to give
those papers personally to Mr. Waters. He didn't say they were
important; I don't know that they are. But if I say I am going to
give an envelope personally to any one, I don't intend to give that
envelope to a third person if there's nothing in it more valuable
than--hair nets!"
The window they were passing suggested the comparison, and Bobby
laughed good-naturedly and forebore to argue further. Promptly at
three o'clock she and Betty entered the elevator in the office
building and were whirled up to the fifth floor to find Mr. Waters in
his private office.
"Mr. Littell telephoned half an hour ago," he told them, taking the
envelope and running over the papers with a practised eye as he
talked. "He hoped to catch you before you left here. I believe he
wants to speak to his daughter. There's a booth right there, Miss
Bobby."
Bobby had a brief conversation with her father and came out in a few
minutes in evident haste.
"He wants us to do a couple more errands, Betty," she announced.
"We'll have to hurry, for it's after three."
The architect had written a receipt for the papers, and Bobby now
hurried Betty off, explaining as they went that they must take a car
to Octagon House.
Octagon House proved to be the headquarters for the American
Institute of Architects, and Bobby's errand had to do with one of the
offices. Betty admired the fine woodwork and the handsome design of
the house while waiting for her companion, and in less than fifteen
minutes they were back on the street car bound for "the tallest
office building in Washington," as Bobby described it.
"Dad wants an architectural magazine that's out of print, and he
thinks I can get it there," she said. "Afterward, if we have time,
we'll go to the top of the building. The root is arranged so that you
can step out, and they say the view is really splendid. Not so
extensive as from the Monument, of course, but not so reduced,
either. I've always wanted to get up on the roof and see what I could
see."
Finding the office her father had specified did not prove as easy a
task as Bobby had anticipated, and she said frankly that if she had
been alone she would have given up and taken another day for the
search.
"But if you can keep a promise down to the last dot of the last
letter, far be it from me to fall short," she remarked. "Oh, Betty,
do you see any office that looks like Sherwood and David on this
board?"
At last they found it under another name, which, as Bobby rather
tactlessly told the elevator boy, was not her idea of efficiency. The
copy of the magazine Mr. Littell especially wanted was wrapped up and
placed safely in Bobby's hands.
"And now," declared that young person gaily, "as the reward of
virtue, let's go up on the roof. It is after four, but we'll have
time if we don't dawdle. We can get from here to the theater in
fifteen minutes."
They started for the elevator, and as a car came up and the gates
opened a boy got off. He would have brushed by without looking up,
but Betty saw him at once.
"Bob!" she cried in amazement "Why, Bob Henderson!"