“He didn’t take the only dollar of your own in the world?”
“Mary, what could I do? It seemed a crime to give, and a crime not to give. He cried like a child; said it was all a sham about his dinner and his robe de chambre. An aunt, two little cousins, an aged uncle at home—and not a cent in the house! What could I do? He says he’ll return it in three days.”
“And”—Mary laughed distressfully—“you believed him?” She looked at him with an air of tender, painful admiration, half way between a laugh and a cry.
“Come, sit down,” he said, sinking upon the little wooden buttress at one side of the door-step.
Tears sprang into her eyes. She shook her head.
“Let’s go inside.” And in there she told him sincerely, “No, no, no; she didn’t think he had done wrong”—when he knew he had.
CHAPTER XXIII.
WEAR AND TEAR.