Suddenly, as the sun, which had been for a long time slipping down behind the mountains at his back, finally disappeared, his face cleared. He had found a solution.
He sprang up from the cold stone, where his fingers had been mechanically feeling out the familiar letters of the inscription: “Blessed are the dead—” and catching up the prone wheel, strode upon it and dashed down the darkening street toward the little cottage near the willows belonging to his Aunt Saxon. He was whistling as he went, for he was happy. He had found a way to keep his cake and eat it too. It would not have been Billy if he had not found a way out.
Aunt Saxon turned a drawn and anxious face away from the window at his approach and drew a sigh of momentary relief. This bringing up boys was a terrible ordeal. But thanks be this immediate terror was past and her sister's orphaned child still lived! She hurried to the stove where the waiting supper gave forth a pleasant odor.
“Been down to the game at M'nop'ly,” he explained happily as he flung breezily into the kitchen and dashed his cap on a chair, “Gee! That ham smells good! Say, Saxy, whad-ya do with that can of black paint I left on the door step last Saturday?”
“It's in a wooden box in the corner of the shed, Willie,” answered his Aunt, “Come to supper now. It'll all get cold. I've been waiting most an hour.”
“Oh, hang it! I don't s'pose you know where the brush is—Yes, I'm coming. Oh, here 'tis!”
He ate ravenously and briefly. His aunt watched him with a kind of breathless terror waiting for the inevitable remark at the close: “Well, I gotta beat it! I gotta date with the fellas!”
She had ceased to argue. She merely looked distressed. It seemed a part of his masculinity that was inevitable.
At the door he was visited with an unusual thoughtfulness. He stuck his head back in the room to say:
“Oh, yes, Saxy, I might not be home till morning. I might stay all night some place.”