"Then let us go that way," responded Abbott stubbornly.
"Abbott," the school-director warned, "you'd better come on over to my place—I'm going there this instant to—to get a cup of tea. It'll be best for you, old fellow, you listen to me, now—you need a little er—a—some—a little stimulant."
"No," Abbott returned definitely. He had done nothing wrong, and he resented the accusing glances from across the way. "No, I'm going with Fran."
"And don't you bother about him," Fran called after the retreating chairman of the board, "he'll have stimulant enough."
CHAPTER XI
THE NEW BRIDGE AT MIDNIGHT
It was almost time for summer vacation. Like all conscientious superintendents of public schools, Abbott Ashton found the closing week especially fatiguing. Examinations were nerve-testing, and correction of examination-papers called for late hours over the lamp. At such times, when most needing sleep, one sleeps least.
One strolls, at hours devoted by others to slumber. Abbott Ashton, for instance, had fallen into the reprehensible habit of bolting from the boarding-house, after the last paper had been graded, no matter how late the night, and making his way rapidly from town as if to bathe his soul in country solitude. Like all reprehensible habits this one was presently to revenge itself by getting the "professor" into trouble.
One beautiful moonlight night, he was nearing the suburbs, when he made a discovery. The discovery was twofold: first, that the real cause of his nightly wanderings was not altogether a weariness of mental toil; second, that he had, for some time, been trying to escape from the thought of Fran. He had not known this. He had simply run, asking no questions. It was when he suddenly discovered Fran in the flesh, as she slipped along a crooked alley, gliding in shadows, that the cause of much sleeplessness was made tangible.
Abbott was greatly disturbed. Why should Fran, be stealthily darting down side-alleys at midnight? The wonder suggested its corollary—why was he running as from some intangible enemy? He realized that the Fran-thought had been working in the under-layers of his mental processes all the time his upper crust had busied itself with rehearsals of "Beyond the Alps lies Italy" and the determination of Hamlet's madness. But now was no time for introspection, and he set himself the task of solving the new mystery. As Fran merged from the mouth of the alley, Abbott dived into its bowels, but when he reached the next street, no Fran was to be seen.