CHAPTER XVII
CONCLUSIONS
The next scene in this little drama of conflicting ideas and their results takes us to a small park where Jack led Betty to a bench and sat down beside her. Neither wore any hats and the late afternoon sunshine fell upon Betty’s gold locks and Jack’s dark ones through the Maytime green of boughs above them. They had talked of incidental school matters on the short ride, when Betty had preferred the park to being entertained at a tea room.
At once Jack had began to tell Betty how he had just heard about her going home, through the colored maid who had looked from a downstairs window and had seen Betty outside, “flyin’ along as if de ol’ Nick hise’f was afteh her!” Jack’s mouth showed some mirth as he quoted the dialect.
“That was the way I felt, Jack. Honestly this is no joke. I was frightened about going home, but I was more scared to stay, Jack. I’ve no doubt but you intended to have me taken home safely. I went to speak to you about matters but I saw that you were in no condition, or mood, for that matter. Why, Jack, I never was where anybody was intoxicated before, and I think it was terrible!”
“Oh, Betty, it wasn’t as bad as that. You’re just a little goose about it. You’ll get used to it.”
“Never. Do you think I’d risk having my senses half gone, or all gone, and not know, scarcely, what was happening?—besides getting so you have to have it! And how did it happen that you didn’t know I was gone? Just because you didn’t know what was happening.”
“Ye-ah. That’s the reason I wouldn’t come out to your house. I thought your father might meet me with a gun.”
“Please don’t joke about it.”
Betty went on to explain that if there had been any older people there at the time, she would have asked to be sent home and made “proper leave-takings.” She described briefly her trip home, her satin slippers muddy from the “April shower in May,” her talk with her mother, and what her parents thought about the matter.
“You see, Jack, in the little town we came from there was a nice boy next door that we just saw going to pieces little by little and having his life ruined and breaking his mother’s heart—losing his jobs—I imagine you see more what drinking does to people in a country town where you know everybody. Why, I’d be the most thankful friend you’ve got, Jack, if I thought you’d let it alone!”