Mrs. Culme had
forgotten him was too crude a way of putting it Similar incidents led
him to think that she had probably told her maid to tell the butler to
telephone the coachman to tell one of the grooms (if no one else needed
him) to drive over to Northridge to fetch the new secretary; but on
a night like this, what groom who respected his rights would fail to
forget the order?

Faxon's obvious course was to struggle through the drifts to the
village, and there rout out a sleigh to convey him to Weymore; but what
if, on his arrival at Mrs. Culme's, no one remembered to ask him
what this devotion to duty had cost? That, again, was one of the
contingencies he had expensively learned to look out for, and the
perspicacity so acquired told him it would be cheaper to spend the night
at the Northridge inn, and advise Mrs. Culme of his presence there by
telephone. He had reached this decision, and was about to entrust his
luggage to a vague man with a lantern, when his hopes were raised by the
sound of bells.

Two sleighs were just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost
there sprang a young man muffled in furs.

"Weymore?--No, these are not the Weymore sleighs."

The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform--a voice
so agreeable that, in spite of the words, it fell consolingly on Faxon's
ears. At the same moment the wandering station-lantern, casting a
transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be in the
pleasantest harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very
young--hardly in the twenties, Faxon thought--but his face, though full
of a morning freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine-drawn, as though
a vivid spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness.
Faxon was perhaps the quicker to notice such delicacies of balance
because his own temperament hung on lightly quivering nerves, which yet,
as he believed, would never quite swing him beyond a normal sensibility.

"You expected a sleigh from Weymore?" the newcomer continued, standing
beside Faxon like a slender column of fur.

Mrs. Culme's secretary explained his difficulty, and the other brushed
it aside with a contemptuous "Oh, _Mrs. Culme!_" that carried both
speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.

"But then you must be--" The youth broke off with a smile of
interrogation.

"The new secretary? Yes. But apparently there are no notes to be
answered this evening." Faxon's laugh deepened the se