Something sang in Johnny’s heart as he reached out to place his gift on Molly’s dresser and found himself gazing at his own picture in a neat little frame hung to one side of the girl’s large mirror.
The picture was an old-fashioned studio photograph portraying the subject in one of his saddest and most miserable moments. Johnny’s pride had long since forced him to destroy the copy he had kept for himself. But there it was in her room!
The world suddenly became a paradise. Even on Johnny the day had not been wasted. He smiled sheepishly on catching sight of his own reflection in the glass. He began to ask himself important questions. Between Molly and him there had never passed a word beyond the province of friendship. She was a rich man’s daughter, and forty a month is no inducement to hold out to young ladies of her means. And then, too, it didn’t lead to steady employment if one made eyes at owners’ daughters. There were some social barriers even in Nevada.
Now, that he was leaving, matters matured very rapidly in the boy’s mind. What sort of a fool had he been all these years not to have known that he was over his head, that Molly Kent meant more to him than any other being who had come into his life? An hour ago he had told himself he was blue because he was leaving the country and the Diamond-Bar behind. That was a lie! Own up to it, now. It wasn’t the Diamond-Bar or the purple shadows on the Tuscaroras that he was going to miss. No! It was Molly Kent!
And Molly? Johnny’s teeth clenched under his tightly pressed lips as he gazed once more on that picture of himself.
“She don’t hate me, at least,” he murmured half aloud. “Who’d ever thought she’d ’a’ kept that thing all these years? Why—and there’s those little silver spurs I brung her when she was just a kid. Real silver, they was, too.”
Johnny put his hand on them tenderly. He seemed to have difficulty in breathing. Emotion was welling up in him to a point which made him reel. The mouth organ was placed on the bureau. He wanted to get outside, to think, to tell himself that he had not been dreaming, that life still went on.
Was it because of Molly that the old man had been so short with him? The thought galloped through Johnny’s mind. Did Jackson Kent see in him a possible suitor for her hand—an undesirable, financially irresponsible suitor? Had there been talk, whisperings behind his back? Had Molly said anything? A dozen questions leaped to his mind. He shook his head wearily as he turned for the door, anxious to be away from this house which only a few minutes before he had been loath to leave. Another step would have taken him to the door, when he stopped, mouth open, his eyes bulging as if they could not believe what they beheld. Slowly the foot which he had poised in mid-air came down; but the accusing finger which he had pointed at the thing beside the door did not waver.
“Great God!” he groaned. “That’s a copy of the picture I’ve got in my pocket!”
It was, beyond question. Set in a small gold frame hung beside the door was an exact duplicate of the photograph he had found in the dead man’s wallet.