"I think just as I always have," said Dick simply. "Please calm yourself, you're safe now." Then to occupy her mind, he told her of the work the Young People's Society was doing, and how they missed her there and at the Mission.
"But don't you find such things rather tiresome, you know?" she asked.
"There's not much life in those meetings seems to me; I wonder now how
I ever stood them."
"You are very busy then?" asked Dick, hiding the pain her words caused him.
"Oh yes; with our whist club, box parties, dances and dinners, I'm so tired out when Sunday comes I just want to sleep all day. But one must look after one's social duties, you know, or be a nobody; and our set is such a jolly crowd that there's always something going."
"And you have forgotten your class at the Mission altogether?" Dick asked.
"Oh no, I saw one of the little beggars on the street this summer. It was down near the Mission building, and don't you know, we were out driving, a whole party of us, and the little rascal shouted: 'Howdy, Miss Goodrich.' I thought I would faint. Just fancy. And the folks did guy me good. The gentlemen wanted to know if he was one of my flames, and the girls all begged to be introduced; and don't you know, I got out of it by telling them that it was the child of a woman who scrubs for us."
Dick said nothing. "Could it be possible?" he asked himself, "that this was the girl who had been such a worker in the church." And then he thought of the change in his own life in the same period of time; a change fully as great, though in another direction. "It don't take long to go either way if one only has help enough," he said, half aloud.
"What are you saying, Mr. Falkner?" asked Amy.
"It's not far home now," answered Dick, and they fell into silence again.
As they neared the Goodrich mansion, Amy clasped Dick's arm with both her little hands: "Mr. Falkner, promise me that you will never speak to a living soul about this evening."