"P. S.," popped into his mind. But very sternly he drove it out, calling himself hard names. Ought he not be glad that Shirley was having a good time?
"I am glad. Poor dear! It's going to be very hard for her if things don't get better soon. You see," he explained to himself, "in some things Shirley hasn't quite grown up yet, just as Maizie said, and good times mean so much to her."
He sat down and wrote her the cheeriest letter he could compose.
He himself felt old enough to interest an antiquarian. Before Shirley came back he felt older, with nothing to do but sit idly in his office, figuring his bank balance for the thousandth time or working over some of his old sketches, jumping nervously every time the door opened. (But the visitor always turned out to be some one who wanted to sigh and groan in company over the hard times.) Of evenings in the apartment, which grew dustier and lonelier every day, he would write his letter to Shirley, mail it and then get out his easel. Frowning with determination, he would put and keep his mind firmly on a new idea for a Norman Gothic cathedral, until, about midnight, worry and loneliness would steal away and leave him with the swiftly growing sketch.
Shirley's visit ended at last. David was pacing up and down the platform a full hour before her train was due. In the street-car that evening people smiled kindly at the pretty little family group—the gravely smiling young man who held the baby so awkwardly, the pretty wife bubbling over with joy in the reunion and with accounts of the good times she had been having.
Afterward, when Davy Junior had had his bottle and closed his eyes,
Shirley dusted off one chair and they sat down in it.
"Now tell me about yourself and business and everything."
So, finding it harder than he had thought it could be, he told her of the panic and what it meant to them. She listened with a pretty air of taking it all in and making ready to meet the situation.
When his account was ended, she pushed herself back to look into his eyes.
"David, when did you know about that Fisher man?"