"Yes, you could," she replied, with a doggedness that some women can employ so effectively.
"But I couldn't," he reiterated. "Joe 'd never forgive me."
The tears left her eyes at this response and a look of anger replaced them.
"Well," she said, angrily, "I can pry into his business and I am going to, and if you won't help me, I'll get somebody that will!"
Barry went to bed that night feeling very uncomfortable. He had his own suspicions concerning Joe Hart, but he did not have the courage to give voice to them. Besides it distressed him very much to feel that he had incurred the displeasure of his motherly landlady. All the next day the incident bothered him, and more than once he found himself looking anxiously at Joe and wondering whether it would not be a good thing to ask his young friend to explain the cause of his unusual conduct. But he did not, and the feeling of his discomfort weighed heavily upon him every hour of the day.
That night at dinner Barry noticed that Joe was very much preoccupied in his manner. He bolted his food and kept looking at the clock with an unnatural anxiety.
"What's the matter, Joe?" asked Barry. "Have to go out?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
Joe seemed confused for a moment and then said hastily: