“Well, how did you work?” questioned Rose.
“I worked like a dog. I never worked so hard in my life before,” Tommy owned ingenuously. “You see my mind was on—other things. I kept wondering where you were and what you were doing and what was happening, and all the time, without thinking what I was doing, I kept working harder and faster. It ain’t that way at all when I think of magic. That doesn’t speed up work, and I don’t care. Gee! I don’t want to work at the rate I have to-day. Not on your tin-type. But I ain’t so sorry to-day.”
“Why, Tommy?” Betty asked soberly. For she feared his disappointment was so great that he welcomed physical weariness to offset it.
“Well, I’ll tell you. Seeing dad in such a pleasant frame of mind, says I to myself, ‘Here’s your chance, Finnyfish!’ So I up and proposed to him that he give me my car-fares I save by walking next term, same as your father and Rose’s do. And by gee! he up and promised! I’m weak yet from the shock!”
“O, Tommy! how splendid! You’ll be buying a book on magic about every other week, won’t you?” asked Betty gaily.
“Who knows? I’m so used to going on with a mere pittance that I may become a miser,” returned Tommy musingly. As a matter of fact an explanation of the girls’ apparently unsuccessful return had flashed through his mind. Perhaps it cost a lot more than Betty had thought of to be cured of blindness. Specialists were very expensive, he knew, and like as not ten dollars wasn’t so much to this be-decorated Vandegrift as a dime was to him. Quite likely his fee for this cure, which was of course at the top of his list, was as much as twenty-five or fifty dollars. That evening he dropped into the Poganys’ and, the moment Aunt Sarah went out into the kitchen to make bread, turned to Betty.
“I told you this afternoon how I was so used to going without that railroad money that I hardly know what to do with it,” he said. “Well, it’s the truth that I don’t care a mite about it except for the satisfaction of getting it out of dad. If you and Rose have any use for it, you can have the whole ninety cents every week.”
“O, Tommy, what a true, true friend you are!” cried the girl with tears in her soft eyes. “We don’t need it right now, but if we should later, it would be such a comfort to know that we might have it.”
“When in doubt, consult Finnyfish,” quoth Tommy. He said no more, but decided secretly to save the money each week and have it ready in case of emergency.
As for Betty, this made it only seem the harder that they couldn’t confide in Tommy. But of course he knew in part. He couldn’t help guessing something very like the truth. They couldn’t discuss this visit and others with him and he couldn’t ask questions. But he couldn’t help knowing the meaning of their weekly secret visits to Millville. And he would realize that there was hope for Rose, but that the cure would take time.