Occasionally Dick has found an opportunity, on holidays, to go out to the dear old fishing hole, and interview a few of his friends, the bass; his ability to capture the wily finny denizens of the river still holds good, and usually he returns home with a full string.
He never visits the old place without thinking of that day when he heard Bessie Gibbs raising her voice in laments over the impending fate of her darling Angora kitten, and the memory always brings a smile to Dick's face.
Bessie is now finishing her schooling at a college; but she and Dick correspond faithfully, and during vacation times they seem inseparable.
He still thinks her the prettiest and sweetest of her sex, and as for Bessie—well, it hardly seems fair to peep into the sacred recesses of a young girl's heart, but she is never one half so happy as when with Dick, and whenever she looks at the little scar on the back of his left hand she shudders, remembering that fearful day when he burst in upon them just in the nick of time, and in his usual energetic way quickly extinguished what might have been a serious conflagration.
Mr. Gibbs, of course, has his eyes about him and understands what this intimacy is bound to end in eventually; but he seems perfectly satisfied that it should be so.
He cannot expect to keep his darling child with him always, and since these things must be he is content with the way events have come about.
The wise man who could read boy character as well as he did on that never-to-be-forgotten day when he sent Dick, still resting under suspicion in connection with the missing securities, out to his home to bring back a valuable packet, feels confident that he has made no mistake, and that he can trust the happiness of Bessie to his keeping.
Mr. Gibbs always declares that he never made an investment in his whole life that brought him in such quick and magnificent returns as his decision that day to put a boy upon his honor; and he hardly dares picture what might have happened had he failed to read the truth lying back of those clear eyes of Dick, the Bank Boy.