The young man followed the direction of his eyes and nodded.  He continued looking at the advancing group for a moment, and as he stood up, “You could tell that Mr. Marsh is a millionaire by the way his clothes fit, couldn’t you?” he remarked, turning to go back to his desk in the outer office.

They were coming down the hall now.  Neale went forward to open the door, met and breasted the wave of children who after hugging casually at his knees and arms, swept by; and stepped forward to be presented to the newcomers.  They had not crossed the threshold, before his first impression was reversed in one case.  Marsh was a live-wire all right.  Now that he had seen his eyes, he knew what Elly had meant when she said that when he looked at you it was like lightning.

Mr. Bayweather barely waited for the first greetings to be pronounced before he burst out, “Do they say, ‘backwards and forwards’ or ’back and forth’?”

Neale laughed.  Old Bayweather was perennial.  “Backwards and forwards, of course,” he said.  “English people always say everything the longest possible way.”  He explained to the others, “Mr. Bayweather is an impassioned philologist . . .”

“So I have gathered,” commented Marsh.

“. . . and whenever any friends of his go on travels, they are always asked to bring back some philological information about the region where they go.”

He turned to Marise (how sweet she looked in that thin yellow dress).  “Where do you want your personally conducted to begin, dear?” he asked her. (Lord!  How good it seemed to get back to Marise!)

Mr. Bayweather cut in hastily, “If I may be permitted to suggest, I think a history of the mill would be advisable as a beginning.  I will be glad to tell the newcomers about this.  I’ve just been working the subject up for a chapter in history of Ashley.”

Neale caught an anguished side-glance from Marise and sent back to her a shrugged message of helplessness in the face of Destiny.  The man didn’t live who could head old Bayweather off when he got started on local history.  And besides, this would give him time to get those last three letters finished.  Aloud he said, “I wouldn’t dare say a word about history in Mr. Bayweather’s presence.  I have a few letters to finish.  I’ll just step into the outer office and be ready to start when you’ve heard the history lecture.”  He turned to the children, who were tapping on the typewriter.  “Look here, kids, you’d be better off where you won’t break anything.  Get along with you out into the mill-yard and play on the lumber-piles, why don’t you?  Paul, you see if you can tell yellow birch from oak this time!”

He and the children beat a retreat together into the outer office, where he bent over Arthur’s desk and began to dictate in a low voice, catching, as he did so, an occasional rotund phrase from the disquisition in the other room. “. . . the glorious spirit of manly independence of the Green Mountain Boys . . .”