"Is dat de way she sizes up de facts? Well, ain't dat just like a woman! Wouldn't it just freeze your eyeballs, de way goils do t'ings!
"But see here, pard. Swell friends can do a guy a lot o' good. Why don't you hang on to her? Why don't you put her wise?"
"She wouldn't believe me. My boy—" the tone tried to be light—"when the world is certain to regard your truth as a lie, it's just as well to keep still."
David went on with his tacking, and a minute or more went by before Tom asked, quietly: "But wouldn't you like her to know de facts? Wouldn't you like her to be your friend?"
"Oh, yes—why not?" David responded in his voice of affected unconcern.
Tom gazed steadily at David's back, his thin face wrinkled with thought. At length his head nodded, and he said to himself in a whisper: "So she t'inks he put me up to it, does she?"
CHAPTER III
A PROPHECY
At the end of the afternoon, a few days later, a fierce battle was being waged in the basement room that was the Aldrich home, when a knock made David lower his defensive fists.