She sat looking at him, her lips trembling.
“Now you mind,” he repeated severely, shaking his pipe at her, but not daring to meet her eyes. “I won’t have no foolin’. Promise you’ll keep this t’ yourself.”
She was laughing now, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“I promise,” she cried. “But oh, Mr. Smith, you can’t prevent my thinking, though you may prevent my talking. Do you want to know what I think of what you’ve done?”
He shook a threatening finger, but she was bending over him and looking down into his eyes.
“No, you can’t frighten me! I’m not in the least afraid of you, for I think you’re a dear, dear, dear!”
He half started from his chair, but she turned and fled into the house, casting one sparkling glance over her shoulder as she went. He sank back into his seat with a face quite the reverse of angry, and started up his pipe again, and as he gazed out at the hillside he was tasting one of the great sweetnesses of life.
That evening, at the close of the service in the little church, Miss Andrews waited for the minister, to tell him her good news.
“And who is this Good Samaritan?” he asked, when she had finished. “It may be business, as he says, but it’s rather queer business, it seems to me, to lend a boy nine hundred dollars, with no security but his own, and with an indefinite time in which to repay it. What could have persuaded him to do it?”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “he saw the boy.”