Smith chuckled.
“Well, sir, Susie, it fair broke my heart to start off without seein’ your pretty face and hearin’ your sweet voice again, but the fact is, I got so lonesome awaitin’ for you that I just naturally had to be travellin’. I ups and hits the breeze, and I has no pencil or paper to leave a note behind. It wasn’t perlite, Susie, I admits,” he said mockingly.
“Dig up that money you’re goin’ to divide.” Susie looked like a young wildcat that has been poked with a stick.
Smith drew an exaggerated sigh and shook his head lugubriously.
“Child, I’m the only son of Trouble. I gets in a game and I loses every one of our honest, hard-earned dollars. The tears has been pilin’ out of my eyes and down my cheeks for forty miles, thinkin’ how I’d have to break the news to you.”
“Smith, you’re just a common, common thief!” All the scorn of which she was capable was in her voice. “To steal from your own pal!”
“Thief?” Smith put his fingers in his ears. “Don’t use that word, Susie. It sounds horrid, comin’ from a child you love as if she was your own step-daughter.”
The muscles of Susie’s throat contracted so it hurt her; her face drew up in an unbecoming grimace; she cried with a child’s abandon, indifferent to the fact that her tears made her ludicrously ugly.
“Smith,” she sobbed, “don’t you ever feel sorry for anybody? Couldn’t you ever pity anybody? Couldn’t you pity me?”
Smith made no reply, so she went on brokenly;