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Copyright

© 2016 by Grace Livingston Hill

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

All scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

Published by Barbour Books, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com

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CHAPTER ONE

Reuben Remington came out of the drafting room with his hands full of papers and blueprints and walked the length of the big outer office toward the superintendent's room with a grin on his face, his pleasant lips puckered as with a suppressed whistle.

There was a spring in his step and a light in his eyes that was quite unwonted, and he glanced about in a friendly way toward the girls and men who were hard at work at their desks about him, which was quite different from his usual demeanor.

Reuben was tall and well built, with a grace in every movement that made people look after him as he went through a room, though his usual gravity prevented any of them from knowing him very well. He had red-gold hair that showed a tendency to curl if it was ever allowed to grow long enough to do so, and very blue eyes that looked as if they had a sunny light behind them. But he had always held his head so high and kept such a veil of reticence over the blue of his eyes that his fellow workers felt he was trying to be exclusive. He had been with the company now for almost three years, and still they hadn't quite figured him out. Of course, he wasn't a mere member of the office staff, and they did not have much contact with him, but they saw him often enough to make them curious. And sometimes at the lunch hour in the nearby restaurants the girls talked him over. The men didn't need to. They were not so curious and not so self-conscious. He was just another fellow working hard, and they were fairly friendly with him and let it go at that.

But there was something different today about Reuben as he walked across that room, and they all looked up and noticed it.

"What's gotten into our friend Mr. Gravity?" whispered Evelyn Howe to Wilda Murdock, who was working at the next typewriter. "He looks as merry as a lark. See his eyes twinkle? He certainly is in high feather. He almost looks as if he might expect one to say good morning to him. I wonder what happened?"

"Why, don't you know?" said Wilda, watching the young man furtively from her distance. "He's on vacation tomorrow. Going away somewhere. It's the first vacation he's had since he's been here. The first year, of course, he didn't get any. They never do, starting, you know. And last year there was such a rush they needed him, and he stayed. He's that kind, you know. Always eating up work. Wanted the experience, I heard someone say. I wonder where he's going?"

"Probably home to his mother," said Evelyn. "That solemn kind are always mother-boys."

"No," said Wilda, shaking her head. "I heard his mother was dead.