"Not if it's going to deal you any misery, little girl."
"You're very kind to me."
He put up his hand. "That's all right, Miss Sheila," he said. "That's all right. It's a real pleasure and comfort to me to have you here and I'll try to shape things so they'll suit you—and Momma too. Trust me. But don't you ask me to put any faith in Dickie's upper story. I've climbed up there too often. I'll give up my plan to go round there to-morrow and—" He paused grimly.
"And bawl him out?" suggested Sheila with one of her Puckish impulses.
"Hump! I was going a little further than that. He would likely have done the bawlin'. But don't you worry yourself about Dickie. He's safe for this time—so long's you don't blame me, or—The Aura."
His voice on the last word suffered from one of its cracks. It was as though it had broken under a load of pride and tenderness.
Sheila saw for a moment how it was with him. To every man his passion and his dream: to Sylvester Hudson, his Aura. More than wife or child, he loved his bar. It was a fetish, an idol. To Sheila's fancy Dickie suddenly appeared the sacrifice.
CHAPTER VI
THE BAWLING-OUT
Dickie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing. Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks. She was so tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were audible all over the hotel. When Dickie woke in his narrow room after his moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and, groaning, thrust his head under the pillow. With whatever bitterness his kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia. She took advantage of the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to taunt and to humiliate him. His plunge under the pillow did not escape her notice.