Evan's salary was still two hundred a year—dollars, not pounds. The box of candy he bought consumed almost two days' earnings.
CHAPTER V.
MOVED.
While Evan and Julia ate their candy and put their digestive organs out of tune, Frankie Arling sat reading stray poems from her French reader. She repeated to herself, in the little nook she called her study, a verse of De Musset's:
"J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,
Et mes amis et ma gaieté;
J'ai perdu jusqu'à, la fierté
Qui faisait croire à mon genie."
That was about how she felt. She had cried considerably when Our Banker first went away. Now she did not yield to the temptation of tears, but she was miserably lonesome and sad—the more so since his letters grew less and less frequent and less intimate.
Frankie was a girl of seventeen and as romantic as those young creatures are made. She had always been Evan's "school girl," and he had always been her juvenile hero. Perhaps theirs was the commonest form of love-affair, but the character of the affection could never rightly be called "common." Incompatibility makes affection commonplace and mean, but Frankie and Evan were suited to each other. They both knew they were, and that knowledge made them feel sure of the ideals they cherished.
Because she clung to her ideals so tenaciously Frankie was often very wretched; she was so on the night of Evan's visit to the Waterseas with the box of candy. Not that she knew about it—but she began to doubt the impossibility of such happenings. His letters had gradually fed a suspicion in her mind.
An idea occurred to Frankie. She would call up Mr. Dunlap, the Hometon teller, and invite him up to spend the evening; then she would question him concerning the fickleness of bankclerks.