most becoming clothes, so as to look, and to feel, as impressive as
possible. As a matter of fact, she had never looked prettier than when,
having done her best to repair the ravages of the wind, she stood waiting
a moment longer to get her breath and decide how she should ask for Mr.
Blake and what she should say when she was summoned into his awful
presence. Her cheeks were glowing with the cold, her eyes bright with
excitement, and her hair blown into damp little curls that were far more
becoming than any more studied arrangement would have been. Mr. Richard
Blake would indeed be difficult to please if he failed to find her
charming.

She gave a final pat to her hair, loosened her furs, and knocked boldly
on the office door. There was no answer. Betty had reached out her hand
to knock again when it occurred to her that people who came to her
father's office walked right in. So she carefully opened the door and
stepping just inside, closed it again after her. She found herself in a
big, bare room, with three or four desks near the long windows and a
table by the door. Only one desk was occupied--the one in the farthest
corner of the room. The young man sitting behind it--he was very young
indeed, smooth-shaven, with expressionless, heavy-lidded eyes, and a
mouth that drooped cynically at the corners,--barely glanced at his
visitor, and then dropped his eyes once more to the papers on his desk.
Betty waited a moment, while he wrote rapidly on the margin of one sheet
with a blue pencil, and then, seeing that he apparently intended to go on
reading and writing indefinitely, she gave a deprecating little cough.

"Is Mr. Richard Blake in?" she asked.

"Yes," answered the young man behind the desk, without so much as
glancing in her direction.