If it comes to
a fight, FIGHT!"
And then something happened that brought his heart to a dead stop. He
was close to the door. His ear was against it. And he was listening to
a voice. It was not Wallie's, and it was not the iron man's. It was a
woman's voice, or a girl's.
He opened the door and entered, taking swiftly the two or three steps
that carried him across the tiny vestibule to the big room. His
entrance was so sudden that the tableau in front of him was unbroken
for a moment. Birch logs were blazing in the fireplace. In the big
chair sat McDowell, partly turned, a smoking cigar poised in his
fingers, staring at him. Seated on a footstool, with her chin in the
cup of her hands, was a girl. At first, blinded a little by the light,
Keith thought she was a child, a remarkably pretty child with
wide-open, half-startled eyes and a wonderful crown of glowing, brown
hair in which he could still see the shimmer of wet. He took off his
hat and brushed the water from his eyes. McDowell did not move. Slowly
the girl rose to her feet. It was then that Keith saw she was not a
child. Perhaps she was eighteen, a slim, tired-looking, little thing,
wonderfully pretty, and either on the verge of laughing or crying.
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