Later Ernie helped to put the luggage on a cab. He volunteered for the work and did it gladly. As the cab moved off, his heart seemed to lift and lighten. The burden he had carried for so many months was being borne away on the top of that oppressed and heavy-laden vehicle. Then his eye caught Mooney's. The man, smart almost as his master, was sitting back in the cab, his eyes half shut, and his lips slightly parted. Between them protruded the tip of his tongue.
Mooney was mocking him.
A few days later Ernie missed Ruth from the Third Floor.
He asked Céleste where she had gone.
"Gone to the Second Floor," the girl answered. "She's waiting on a missionary. Makes a nice change after the Captain."
Ernie was glad, yet sorry.
He saw little of the girl thereafter; and she avoided him.
But he still possessed the ten-pound note she had cast away on the morning of Captain Royal's departure, and was worried as to what he should do with it.
He could not send it to her, for she would know the sender. He could not give it her, for it was the price of—what?
And there was no one whom he could consult. His dad in such matters was a child; his mother would be unsympathetic; Mr. Pigott would be too simple to understand.