"Thank you for telling me that," said Charles. He laid his hand warmly on Dan's. The boy liked his touch. Rags, who was sleeping at their feet, nestled closer to them both with a sleepy whine. He was content now that he was really on his way.
"I guess," said Dan chokingly—"I guess I better tell you the whole, because I like you, and you're the right kind. You seem like what she ought to have, and I'm glad it's you—but—it was kind of hard, because, you see, I'd have liked to take care of her myself. I didn't know about you till she told me, and though I knew, of course, I wasn't much to look at beside her, I could have done a lot for her, and I mean to go to college yet, any way, just to show her. You see, I guess it ain't right to go along with you to see her, and not tell you what I said to her. I told her I loved her! And it was true, too. I'd have died for her if it was necessary. If that makes any difference to you, Rags and I'll get out and walk back now. I thought I ought to tell you. I couldn't help loving her, could I, when she did so much for me? And, you see, I never knew about you."
It was a long speech for the silent Dan to make, but Charles's warm hand-grasp through it all helped wonderfully, as well as Dan's growing liking for Dawn's husband.
"Bless you, Daniel!" said Charles, throwing his arm about his companion's shoulders, as he used to do with his chums in college. "You just sit right still where you are. It was noble and honest of you to tell me that. I believe in my heart I like you all the better for it. We are brothers, you see, for I love her that way, too, and it gives me a lot of comfort to know you can understand me. But, old fellow—I don't quite know how to say it—I'm deeply sorry that your love has brought you only pain, and I feel all the more warmly toward you that you tried to help her when you knew she belonged to some one else. I never can thank you enough."
"I couldn't have helped it," said Dan gruffly. "If anybody loved her, they'd have to take care of her, if it killed 'em."
"Dan, old fellow, I love you," said Charles impulsively. "You can't know what this is to me, that you took care of her when I couldn't. I'll love you always, and I shall never forget what you've done for me. Now, begin at the beginning and tell me all you know about her, won't you? I'm hungry to hear."
And Dan found himself telling the whole story of how Dawn had conquered him, the ringleader of mischief in the school, made him her slave, and helped him up to a plane where higher ambitions and nobler standards had changed his whole idea of life.
As he listened to the homely, boyish phrases and read between the lines the pathos of Dawn's struggles, Charles found tears standing in his eyes to think his little girl-wife had been through so much all by herself, without him near to help and comfort. Would he ever, ever, be able to make up to her for it?
He expressed this thought clumsily to Dan, and the boy, all eager now with sympathy, and loving Charles as loyally as Dawn, said royally:
"I calculate one sight of your face'll make her forget it all. Leastways, that's the way it looks to me."