“I’m afraid not,” she said gently. “It wouldn’t share. You wouldn’t understand.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t?” he said crossly.
“Oh,” she tried to explain. “It’s just—that I’ve heard from home.” Her eyes were all alight.
“Oh!” he said rudely, and turned away.
“There’s another man in Meadow Brook,” he told himself gloomily. “I must do something about this right away. I’m a fool, but I can’t help it.”
At recess time he entered Joyce’s classroom with a smile and handed her a newspaper still in its wrapper.
“Here’s a paper from Meadow Brook that just came in the mail. I thought perhaps it might interest you. There’s a boy in High School there who persists in thinking that I’m interested in their baseball team, and every time they win a game I get a sheaf of papers. Of course they don’t interest me. I hardly remember the names of people there any more. I was there so short a time.”
Joyce thanked him and put the paper in her desk for a leisure moment, going on with the blackboard exercise she was writing. Harrington was disappointed. He had hoped she would open the paper in his presence, and he might perhaps get some clue to her interest in Meadow Brook, but she was as cool and disinterested as a lily. Well, he must find a way to keep her in his company, there was no other way. It was against all his principles to be too attentive until he felt she was worthy of his position, but there seemed to be no other way, with her. It was perhaps, after all, a proof that she was really worth while that she held herself aloof. Or could it possibly be subtlety? No, he decided not. Her religion was genuine, and that would preclude subtlety. Well, at least her method had shown him his own heart, and now he must find a way to win out, for it was getting toward spring and he must have this matter settled before he went away on his vacation. He had an eye to another larger school with better pay. It would be an advantage to him to have it known that he was engaged to a personable young woman. It was a wealthy community, where he was hoping to be called, and Joyce would shine in such society with a little tutoring from him, always providing of course that he could rid her of her ridiculous fanaticism.
CHAPTER XXVIII
That morning Darcy received Lib Knox’s letter.