“I wish we could make it a thousand,” said B. C. sincerely. “Well, I don't want to keep you all day in this hot office. Just humor Lucille Hardcome a little; she's high-handed but I think she means all right.”
David went out. The sun was hotter than ever, but for a block or two he did not notice it. Two hundred and fifty dollars increase! It would mean that in a few years he could be even with the world again! Then, as he toiled up the hot hill, his immediate needs returned to his mind, and he thought of Herwig. Whether the old grocer must inevitably fail in business or not the debt David owed him was an honestly contracted debt, and the old man had a right to expect payment; all David's creditors had a right to expect payment. His horror of debt returned in full force. There was not a place where he could look for a dollar; he felt bound and constrained, guilty, shamed.
Before the manse Lucille Hardcome's low-hung carriage stood. He entered the house.
“David!” called 'Thusia from the sitting room, and he hung his hat on the rack and went in to her.
“Lucille is waiting in the study,” said 'Thusia. “She has been waiting an hour; Alice is with her.”
“'Thusia, what has happened!” he cried, for his wife's face showed she had received a blow.
“Oh, David! David!” she exclaimed. “It is Alice! She is engaged!”
“Not Alice! Not our Alice!” cried David. “But—”
'Thusia burst into tears. She reached for his hand, and clung to it.
“Oh, David! To Lanny Welsh—do you know anything about him!” she wept. “I don't know anything about him at all, except he was a bartender, and Roger knows him.”