“Yes, I know. Also terribly sure that if I ever get to you it will be over your office boy's dead body. Well, arm him. I'm coming. Good-by.”
“Wait a minute! Mr. Heyl! Clarence! Hello! Hello!”
A jiggling of the hook. “Number, please?” droned the voice of the operator.
Fanny jammed the receiver down on the hook and turned to her work, lips compressed, a frown forming a double cleft between her eyes.
Half an hour later he was there. Her office boy brought in his card, as she had rehearsed him to do. Fanny noted that it was the wrong kind of card. She would show him what happened to pushers who pestered business women during office hours.
“Bring him in in twenty minutes,” she said, grimly. Her office boy (and slave) always took his cue from her. She hoped he wouldn't be too rude to Heyl, and turned back to her work again. Thirty-nine seconds later Clarence Heyl walked in.
“Hello, Fan!” he said, and had her limp hand in a grip that made her wince.
“But I told——”
“Yes, I know. But he's a crushed and broken office boy by now. I had to be real harsh with him.”
Fanny stood up, really angry now. She looked up at Clarence Heyl, and her eyes were flashing. Clarence Heyl looked down at her, and his eyes were the keenest, kindest, most gently humorous eyes she had ever encountered. You know that picture of Lincoln that shows us his eyes with much that expression in them? That's as near as I can come to conveying to you the whimsical pathos in this man. They were the eyes of a lonely little boy grown up. And they had seen much in the process.