“What can I do for you, Professor Burgess?” she asked.
“Listen to me, Dennie, and then advise me.”
Was this the acting-dean of Sunrise, a second Fenneben, already declared? His face was full of pathos, yet even in his feverish grief it seemed a better face to Dennie than the cold scholarly countenance of two years ago.
“My troubles go back a long way. My father was given to greed. He sold himself and my sister's happiness and mine for money. You think your father is a slave, Dennie, because he has a craving for whisky. Less than half a dozen times a year the demon inside gets him down.”
Dennie looked up with a sorrowful face.
“Yes, but think of what he might do. You don't know what dreadful things he has done—”
“Yes, I do. He told me himself the very worst. I'll never betray him, Dennie. His punishment is heavy enough.”
Burgess laid his hand on her dimpled hand in token of sincerity.
“But that's only rarely, little girl. My father every day in the year gave himself to an appetite for money till he cared for nothing else. My sister, who died believing that I also had turned against her, was forced to marry a man she did not love because he had money. I never knew the man she did love. It was a romance of her girlhood. I was away from home the most of my boyhood years, and she never mentioned his name after the affair was broken off. All I know is that she was deceived and made to believe some cruel story against him. She and her husband came West, where they died. My father never forgave them for going West, nor permitted me to speak her name to him. I never knew why until yesterday. My sister's husband had a brother out here with whom he meant to divide some possessions he had inherited. That settled him with my father forever. There was no DIVISION of property in his creed.”
Burgess paused. Dennie's interest and sympathy made her silent company a comfort.