“No,” Ross objected. “I’m a fool. The biggest damned fool that ever lived.”
“Have it your own way!” said Eddy.
“I can think different if I like. I—” He paused a moment. “It makes me sick, you goin’ away like this. It—it—”
Ross laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Drop it!” he said. “Now, then! It’s about time for us to be off.” He turned toward the bedroom. “I’ll wake her up, while you start the car. I’ll take one of the blankets to wrap her in.”
It was a little early for the train he wanted to catch, but he was in a hurry to be gone. He might have known, though, that it was his fate never to leave this place when or how he wished.
He might have known that there was one inevitable thing still to be faced. He heard the throb of the sturdy little engine downstairs; he thought, he hoped, that the last moment had come, and, instead, he was called upon to endure a moment almost beyond endurance.
For Amy came. The sound of the engine prevented his hearing her entrance; he had just gone into the bedroom when he heard her footsteps on the stairs. In a wild storm of tears, desperate, white as a ghost, she ran in to him.
“Jimmy!” she gasped. “Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy!”
He did not speak. What had he to say to her now?