"Come on," he coaxed, "be a good scout. Let's give 'em the surprise of
their lives."
"You rascal, you!" she said, hitting at him with her cane. "I believe you
are at the bottom of all this. Mind, I promise you nothing."
"You don't have to," he called back. "I can trust you. I'll be here at
three!"
He arrived on Saturday an hour early in the hope of seeing Eleanor, and
was gloriously rewarded by thirty minutes alone with her in the big dark
drawing-room. All the way up from the factory he had thought of the
things he wanted to tell her--all the Martel news, the progress of
affairs at Valley Mead, the fact that he had won his first-term
certificate at the university, and above all about his promotion at
Bartlett & Bangs. But Eleanor gave him no chance to tell her anything.
She was like a dammed-up stream that suddenly finds an outlet. Into
Quin's sympathetic ears she poured her own troubles, talking with her
hands and her eyes as well as her lips, exaggerating, dramatizing,
laughing one minute, half crying the next.
The summer, it seemed, had been one long series of clashes with her
grandmother. She hadn't enjoyed one day of it, she assured him; that is,
not a _whole_ day, for of course there were some gorgeous times in
between.
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