“I may have to scheme a bit—­”

“No, please don’t.  I prefer not to spend the time between stations explaining the scheming and apologizing for it.  Put it to her frankly, letting her understand the situation—­”

Julius shook his head.  “She’s not used to it.  She’ll find it hard to understand why you couldn’t stop off and get out to our place, if only for an hour.”

“Then show her this.”

Waldron took from his breast pocket a card, on which, in very small, close writing and figures, was a concise schedule of his engagements for the coming five days, and, as he had said, nights.

Julius scanned it, and whistled softly a bar from a popular song, “Now Do You See?” “Do eating and sleeping happen to come in on this anywhere?” he queried gently.

“On the run.  It’s this trip up into New Hampshire that’s crowding things; otherwise, I might have managed it very well.”

“Couldn’t anybody else have seen Mr.—­Hackett home?” asked Julius.

“No.”  Waldron’s tone settled that and left no room for dispute.  “There are some things that can’t be done, you know, and that’s one of them.”  He glanced at the great clock over his head.  “Come over and meet him.”

Julius went.

A long, thin figure, wrapped in an ulster, reached out a hand, and a determinedly cheerful voice said, with an evident effort not to show the severe fatigue the journey was costing the convalescent:  “Think of me as Sackett or Jackett or something.  I’m no Hackett; they’re a huskier lot.”

“As you will be soon, of course,” Julius broke in confidently.

“Colombia air is pretty fine, but New Hampshire air is better—­for old New Hampshire boys,” asserted Waldron.  He nodded at a red-capped porter waiting near, and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.  “This chap is going to be all right when he gets where a certain little mother can look after him.  Mothers and blood poisoning don’t assimilate a bit.  And now we have to be off, for I want to get my patient settled in his berth before the train pulls out, and it’s going to be called in about thirty seconds.”

He turned aside for a final word with Julius.  “I’m not asking too much?”

“Do you think you are?”

The two pairs of eyes searched each other.

“I know Miss Dorothy is an orphan; I know, too, that you are her only brother.  You understand that I mean to ask her to marry me, if I can have the chance.  I couldn’t do it—­on paper.  If you approve the match—­and I think you do or you wouldn’t have planned quite so cleverly last July—­”

“What?”

“You brought about that meeting, you know,” said Waldron, smiling, with such a penetrating look that Julius felt it go past all defenses.

“How do you know I did?”

“By a certain peculiar twist to your left eyebrow when that train came in from the wrong direction.  You forget that I went to school with you.  I have seen that twist before; it meant only one thing.”