Lorry suspended his story. He and Arthur sat looking at the moon.
Finally Arthur asked, rather huskily, "Is that the end, Lorry?"
Lorry's keen, indolent face lit up with an absent and tender smile. "That was the end of the beginning," replied he.
Arthur thrilled and resisted a feminine instinct to put his arm round his friend. "I don't know which of you is the luckier," he said.
Lorry laughed. "You're always envying me my good disposition," he went on. "Now, I've given away the secret of it. Who isn't happy when he's got what he wants—heaven without the bother of dying first? I drop into her store two evenings a week to see her. I can't stay long or people would talk. Then I see her now and again—other places. We have to be careful—mighty careful."
"You must have been," said Arthur. "I never heard a hint of this; and if anyone suspected, the whole town would be talking."
"I guess the fact that she's a Wilmot has helped us. Who'd ever suspect a
Wilmot of such a thing?"
"Why not?" said Arthur. "She couldn't do better."
Lorry looked amused. "What'd you have said a few months ago, Ranger?"
"But my father was a workingman."
"That was a long time ago," Lorry reminded him. "That was when America used to be American. Anyhow, she and I don't care, except about the mother. You know the old lady isn't strong, especially the last year or so. It wouldn't exactly improve her health to know there was anything between her daughter and a washerwoman's son, a plain workingman at that. We—Estelle and I—don't want to be responsible for any harm to her. So—we're waiting."