“Never was in it for a minute,” declared Jim, happily. “Of course, the poor man was in love with her; but you can’t blame him for that. Who wouldn’t be? As a matter of fact, I think he was trying to propose to her at the time I got there. But she forgot he was alive when she saw me. You see, she’d simply tolerated him for the sake of your father’s invention that Pepperil had arranged to finance. She couldn’t be rude to him for fear of injuring the deal, though he bored her to death. What with the nuisance of his hanging around there and your father’s anxiety about his invention and your mother’s sickness and the cares of the household bearing down upon her, the poor girl was nearly crazy. Told me that when she sat down to write to me her head was in such a whirl that she hardly knew what she was writing. That’s why her letters sometimes seemed so abstracted and unsatisfying. But now the deal has gone through, your mother’s getting steadily better, Pepperil’s sailing for Europe, and we’re going to be married as soon as the baseball season is over.”