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The Hallowell Partnership
The Hallowell Partnership
CHAPTER I
WHEN SLOW-COACH GOT HIS FIGHTING CHANCE
"Rod!"
No answer.
"Rod, what did that messenger boy bring? A special-delivery letter? Is it anything interesting?" Marian Hallowell pushed Empress from her knee and turned on her pillows to look at Roderick, her brother, who sat absorbed and silent at his desk.
Roderick did not move. Only Empress cocked a topaz eye, and rubbed her orange-tawny head against Marian's chair.
"Rod, why don't you answer me?" Marian's thin hands twitched. A sharp, fretted line deepened across her pretty, girlish forehead. It was not a pleasant line to see. And through her long, slow convalescence it had grown deeper every day.
"Roderick Hallowell!"
Roderick jumped. He turned his sober, kind face to her, then bent eagerly to the closely written letter in his hand.
"Just a minute, Sis."
"Oh, very well, Slow-Coach!" Marian lay back, with a resigned sniff. She pulled Empress up by her silver collar, and lay petting the big, satiny Persian, who purred like a happy windmill against her cheek. Her tired eyes wandered restlessly about the dim, high-ceiled old room. Of all the dreary lodgings on Beacon Hill, surely Roderick had picked out the most forlorn! Still, the old place was quiet and comfortable. And, as Roderick had remarked, his rooms were amazingly inexpensive. That had been an important point; especially since Marian's long, costly illness at college. That siege had been hard on Rod in many ways, she thought, with a mild twinge of self-reproach. In a way, those long weeks of suffering had come through her own fault. The college physician had warned her more than once that she was working and playing beyond her strength. Yet she felt extremely ill-used.
"It wasn't nearly so bad, while I stayed in the infirmary at college." She sighed as she thought of her bright, airy room, the coming and going of the girls with their gay petting and sympathy, the roses and magazines and dainties. "But here, in this tiresome, lonely place! How can I expect to get well!"