But Lionel scarcely heard this taunt. A bitter struggle was tearing his manly, loving, loyal little heart—the claims of his old life and his own loneliness on the one side; the claims of Miss Lucy’s generosity and her loneliness upon the other. He didn’t need her, he thought; but she needed him. She needed him very much. It was his duty to be good to her; and, like many another child under similar circumstances, at that moment Towsley felt that the word “duty” was the most disagreeable one in the language. He took a second real good look at Miss Lucy still sitting, waiting, and this time he saw something in her face that made everything quite easy.
“She understands!” he thought, and then he nodded to her with a happy smile. A second later, with a hurried, “Wait a minute, fellows!” he had darted back into the breakfast-room and, now indifferent to the stares of his comrades, flung his arms about the lady’s neck, crying:
“It’s all right, dear Miss Armacost! I’m not a-going to run away with them. But I’ve just thought of something and I want it, I want it—oh! so much! It’s a little thing! But I want, I do want, before I give up the newspaper business to get just one ‘beat’ on th’ others. May I? May I just go down to the office, and before anybody else gets hold of it, get our ghost story in? It would make a whopper, it would! I’ll carry the boys away with me, and I won’t let on a bit, and I’ll come back surely. Just this once, may I? I never had a chance before?”
It struck even Towsley himself as an odd circumstance that he should ask this permission; he who had never before consulted anybody as to his goings or comings; or that he should wait so eagerly for her reply.
But Miss Lucy scarcely heard him. She was thinking of something else. The clasp of those young arms about her neck thrilled her with a joy unspeakable. With such an expression as it now wore, Towsley’s face seemed, indeed, that of the lost, innocent Lionel restored to life. She was ready and anxious to give him all he desired, even to the half of her kingdom; and she comprehended less of what he was just then saying, than what he had so greatly desired on the previous evening.
“Yes, my dear. You may. We will certainly hire the great stage, and give a ride to as many as it will hold. You shall tell me just what you want, and I will gratify you if it is possible.”
“Thank you—oh! thank you!” he cried, and dashed a kiss at her. At that moment, however, he was more loyal to his paper than generous to his friends, and he ran out hastily.
His mates beheld and construed this action after their own way.
“Pshaw! She’s give him the go-by. He ain’t no swell. Anybody could work the ’doption racket for just one night, he could. Let’s chase him. If she’s give him money, he must treat!” cried Battles contemptuously.
So, in a twinkling, the place was deserted, and Miss Lucy sat alone trying to understand just what had happened.