"Yes, the furniture." Bessie was growing redder and redder, her voice sharper. "The furniture that you and I picked out this long while!"
"Why, no," confessed Alvin, "I thought that you—that you would—would—"
"You thought I would pay for it!" Bessie's voice rose so high that her whole family might have heard if they had not considerately left the house to her and her beau. "Well, you were mistaken!"—Bessie was a slangy person, she said that Alvin was "stung." "And here"—Bessie ran upstairs and returned with a letter—"here is this. I thought, of course, this was a mistake. I paid no attention to it. Open it!"
Alvin grew pale. He recognized, before the envelope was in his hand, the business card on the corner. The bill for Bessie's ring had come to him many times. Now upon the bill Bessie laid the ring itself.
"There!" said she.
Alvin remembered suddenly how David Hartman had appeared on the mountain long ago and had hurled himself upon him. He had now much the same sensations.
"Do you mean that it is over?" he faltered in a dazed tone.
"Yes," answered Bessie in a very firm, decided tone; "I mean just that."
After Alvin had carried the ring back to the jeweler, a way suggested itself of paying the tailor. He returned his beautiful best winter suit, worn but a very few times, and received some credit on his bill. The balance, alas! remained, and the tailor seemed but slightly mollified by his humility. The coal bill remained also, but the coal had been burned and could not be restored to the dealer. The landlord had also been deprived of the rent for his house, the food had been eaten. What Alvin should do about the landlord and about Sarah Ann he did not know. Alvin had a sad Christmas.
January and February passed slowly. Alvin was still too proud to confess to Millerstown that Bessie had jilted him; he paid a little on his great rent bill as means of staving off the discovery a little longer. The children in school became entirely ungovernable, their invention more brilliant and demoniacal. The stovepipe fell with a crash to the floor, the flying soot blackening the faces of teacher and pupils alike. Alvin found his overshoes filled with powdered chalk and damp sponges; he met fresh pictures of himself when he opened the door. When he undertook in midwinter to raise a mustache there appeared promptly upon the upper lip of most of his pupils a dark and suggestive line. The children grew more impertinent, the bills more pressing. In despair Alvin climbed the hill and ransacked the little house where he had lived with his father. He thought bitterly of William, who had squandered his money on madness, and who had given his son so unpleasant a life.