I have never heard of or from him
since the letter I showed you, nearly nine months ago. I rather incline
to the opinion," he said, "that my father is dead."
"If he isn't," said Sharlee, gently, as the great car whizzed up and
stopped with a jerk, "I am very sure that you are to find him some day.
If he hadn't meant that, he would never have asked you to come all the
way from New York to settle here--do you think so?"
"Do you know," said Mr. Queed--so absorbedly as to leave her to clamber
up the car steps without assistance--"if I subscribed to the tenets of
your religion, I might believe that my father was merely a mythical
instrument of Providence--a tradition created out of air _just to bring
me down here_."
"Why," said Sharlee, looking down from the tall platform, as the car
whizzed and buzzed and slowly started, "aren't you _coming_?"
"No, I'm walking," said Mr. Queed, and remembered at the last moment to
pluck off his glistening new derby.
Thus they parted, almost precipitately, and, for all of him, might never
have met again in this world. Half a mile up the road, it came to the
young man that their farewell had lacked that final word of ceremony to
which he now aspired.
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