"I wonder where he is stopping," she said, unconsciously speaking aloud.
"At the public. Where else can he harbor at this time of night? When Dick is missing one is safe to look for him there."
"It may be that he has stopped in at Jessup's. I am sure that pretty Ruth could draw him from the public any day."
"But it'll not be long, as things are going, before Jessup 'll forbid him the house. The girl has high thoughts of herself, with all her soft ways, and will have a good bit of money when her god-mother dies and the old gardener has done with his. If Dick goes on at this pace some one else will be sure to step in, and there isn't such another match for him in the whole county."
"But he may be coming from the gardener's cottage now," suggested the mother. "Young men do not always give it out at home when they visit their sweethearts. You remember—"
Here a smile, full of pleasant memories, softened the old man's face, and his hard hand stole into his wife's lap, searching shyly for hers.
"Maybe I do forget them times more than I ought, wife; but no one can say I ever went by your house to spend a night at the ale-house—now, can they?"
"But Dick may not do it either," pleaded the mother.
"I tell you, wife, there is no use blinding ourselves: the young man spends half his time treating the lazy fellows of the neighborhood, for no one else has so much money."
The old lady sighed heavily.