"What you goin' to do?"
"I'm goin' to school."
If Sandy had announced his intention of putting on baby clothes and being wheeled in a perambulator, Ricks could not have been more astonished.
"What?" he asked in genuine doubt.
"'Cause I want to be the right sort," burst out Sandy, passionately. "This ain't the way you get to be the right sort."
Ricks surveyed him contemptuously. "Look-a here, are you comin' along of me or not?"
"I can't," said Sandy, weakly.
Ricks shifted his pack, and with never a parting word or a backward look he left his business partner of three months lying by the roadside, and tramped away in the darkness.
Sandy started up to follow him; he tried to call, but he had no strength. He lay with his face on the road and talked. He knew there was nobody to listen, but still he kept on, softly talking about microscopes and pink soap, crying out again and again
that he couldn't ever speak to a girl like that.