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"If Dic goes to the inn, I go with him. Mother's a damned old fool." I wish I might have heard the undutiful son speak those blessed words! Williams was delighted when Rita did not insist upon Dic's remaining, but his delight died ignominiously when the girl with tears in her eyes took Dic's hand before them all and said: "Come back to me soon, Dic. I will be waiting for you."
At that same moment Rita was in her own room, not twenty feet away from him, sobbing on her pillow and wishing she were dead. Dic's discovery of the empty room had no real significance, but it seemed a good omen, and he went home and slept. Rita did not sleep. She knew the first step had been taken to separate her from Dic. She feared the separation was really effected.
Dic's straightforward habits of thought and action came to his aid, however, and he determined to make at least one more effort to regain the girl's friendly regard. He abandoned the weather and said somewhat abruptly: "Rita, if I offended you to-night, I am sorry. I cannot tell you all the pain I feel.
In place of shutting her eyes, Rita began to weep, and Miss Tousy continued: "This man loves you and no other, my sweet one. That's the great thing, after all. No girl can steal his heart from you of that you may be sure." "But I say you don't know," sobbed Rita. "I will tell you." And she did tell her, stumbling, sobbing, and blushing through the narrative of Dic's unforgivable perfidy.
He could not endure the picture he had conjured, so he rose from his bed, dressed, stole softly from the house, and walked through the winter storm down the river to Bays's. Feeling like a thief, he crept to the window. The night being cold, the fire had not been banked, but threw its glow out into the room; and Dic's heart leaped for joy when he saw the room was empty.
"I don't want to do anything of the sort," answered Dic; "but if you don't let loose of Rita's arm, I'll " "What will you do?" asked Doug, laughing uproariously. For a moment Dic allowed himself to grow angry, and said, "I'll knock that pumpkin off your shoulders," but at once regretted his words. Doug thought Dic's remark very funny, and intimated as much.
However, he and I remained friends, and from him I have most of the facts constituting this story. This friend of Dic's was a great help to the boy intellectually, and at fourteen or fifteen years of age, when other boys considered their education complete if they could spell phthisis and Constantinople, our hero was reading Virgil and Shakespeare, and was learning to think for himself.
I would not advise you, my dear young girl, to assume Rita's faults; but if you should do so, many a good, though misguided man will mistake them for virtues and will fall at your feet. You will not deceive your sisters; but you won't care much for their opinion. Soon after Dic's departure, Jim Fisher, Mrs. Bays's brother, renewed his offer to take Mr. Bays as a partner in the Indianapolis store.
Then he received his reward, after being cautioned not to disturb the bonnet, and they started out for a walk in the sunshine. Dic's garments were good enough, he had bought them in New York, but Rita's outfit made his clothes look poor and rusty.
Had Dic by the smallest word or act shown a disposition to profit by what Rita feared had been excessive frankness in her letter, or had he, in any degree, assumed the attitude of a confident lover, such word or act would have furnished the needful chemical drop, and Dic's interests would have suffered. His safety at this time lay in ignorance.
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