Their voices with their footsteps diminished. Duncan allowed a prudent interval to elapse, entered the store and began to bestow the goods he had brought in.
While he was at work the light failed. He stopped for lack of it just as Betty came downstairs.
"Hello!" he said cheerfully. "Know where the matches are?"
"Yes." She moved behind a counter and fetched him a few. "Are you 'most done?" she inquired, not unfriendly, as he took down from its bracket one of the oil lamps.
"Hardly," he responded, touching a light to the wick and replacing the chimney. "It's a good deal of a job."
"Yes..."
He replaced the lamp, and in the act of turning toward another caught a glimpse of the girl's face, pale and drawn, her eyes a trifle reddened. And with that commonsense departed from him, leaving him wholly a prey to his impulse of pity. "Oh, thunder!" he told himself, thrusting a hand into his pocket. "I might as well be broke as the way I am now." He produced the scanty remains of his "grubstake."
"Miss Graham..."
"Yes?" she asked, wondering.
"Could you get a party dress for thirty-four dollars?"