"I get you," he said at last. "You can't make up your mind whether to upset the apple-cart and ease your conscience, or keep your mouth shut and let everybody live happily ever after."
Joan looked at him quickly. She had not expected quite such a lucid summing up of the situation from Archie. But he seemed unconscious of epigram.
"Did I ever tell you," he asked irrelevantly, "about an old gentleman that took our room after—well, after my mother went away—and let me go on living with him because he said I was too small to make any difference? A queer old bird he was, drinking himself to death as fast as he could, but mighty good to me. It was him—he, I mean—who taught me to read, and started me going to night school, and got me my first job. When he was about half-lit he used to talk to me as if I was just his age, about all sorts of things, life and books and folks—and one of the things he used to say kind of stuck in my head. 'When in doubt, Archibald' (he was the only person I ever knew who called me all of it!), 'when in doubt, always be a little kinder than necessary....' Pretty good dope, I think."
There was a long silence.
Then Joan said slowly: "Thank you, Archie! Yes, it is pretty good dope. And your old drunkard must have been a good deal of a man. You must tell me more about him some day."
She gave her shoulders a little shake of relief.
"Very well!—I won't upset the apple-cart. I didn't much want to, anyway!"
Archie smiled at her widely. It was a smile that said, "I knew it!" and "Good girl!" and a number of other things that made Joan blush. She had come by insensible degrees to value rather highly the good opinion of her protégé.
"But there's one thing sure," he said, sobering. "You'll be wanting to get out of the apple-cart yourself!"
That, too, Joan had faced in her long night's vigil. The question of her future was no longer hovering in space. It was here, immediate, urgent. She would have liked if possible not to spend another hour under the roof that had been supplied by the late Mr. Calloway.