"Good heavens!" cried Alice Page. "I never—why, Angus, my dear boy—" She laughed and checked herself, and the laugh turned into a little hysterical sob, and without any further warning she began to cry.
Utterly dismayed Angus stood helpless. And then, because it always seemed to comfort Jean when in trouble, he put his arm around her. For a moment Alice Page leaned against him, just as Jean did, but somehow the sensation was quite different. Very hesitatingly and awkwardly, but doing it as well and carefully as he knew how, he kissed her. Whereupon Alice Page jumped as if he had bitten her.
"You, too!" she cried. "O Angus! Oh, good heavens, what a night! Let me go, Angus!"
He let her go, feeling all palpitant and vibrant, for he had never kissed any girl, save Jean, who naturally did not count, but glad that at any rate he had stopped her crying. And Alice Page, who had a large store of common sense, did the very best thing possible. Sitting down on the bank of the ditch she made him sit beside her, and talked to him so gently and frankly that after a while, though he still considered himself to be in love, he felt resigned to its hopelessness, and in fact rather proud of his broken heart and blighted life, as boys are apt to be. Indeed, with his knowledge that he had squared the account with Garland, he was almost happy.
CHAPTER VI
GAIN AND LOSS
Alice Page was but an episode in the life of the Mackays, but her influence was far-reaching, at least with Angus and Jean. She stimulated in the former a taste for reading, dormant and unsuspected. She made him see that he was wasting his evenings, and she got him books of history and travel and voyages, with a sprinkling of the classics of English fiction. Angus, who had been unaware that such books existed, took to them like a young eagle to the air, for they opened the door to the romances of the world.
Though nobody save Alice Page suspected it, the grim-faced boy was full of the romance of youth. At heart he was an adventurer, of the stuff of which the old conquistadores were made.
Jean needed no encouragement to study. Outwardly, Angus was hard and practical. Outwardly, Jean was thoughtful and at times dreamy. Inwardly the reverse was true. Jean was more practical than he, less inclined to secret dreams. She intended to fit herself to teach, and her studies were a means to that end. But most of Angus' reading, apart from technical works, was the end itself. He was not conscious that it was developing him, broadening his outlook, replacing to some extent more intimate contact with the outer world of men and affairs.