“And your seeing her at the fire helped to make you decide to leave town?” demanded the shrewd Tavia.
“Why, Tavia!” murmured Dorothy, rather disturbed because her friend seemed to pry into Tom Moran’s personal affairs.
“Something like that, I s’pose,” replied the young man, running his blackened hands through his mop of red hair. “Ye see—Well! we was engaged.”
“To be married?” queried Ned, open-eyed.
“Of course.”
“Oh, dear me!” whispered Dorothy in Tavia’s ear; “and we treated Miss Olaine so meanly.”
“Huh! Did we know it?” returned her friend.
“I guess she got sorry right away. Of course I ain’t in her class,” said Tom Moran, soberly. “She’s got education. I ain’t got nothing but a little schoolin’ an’ me two hands. But she was willing to wear my ring, and——”
“Tell me,” interrupted Dorothy, herself getting personal now, “is it a ring with a diamond in the middle and little chip emeralds around it?”
“Ye—as,” drawled Tom Moran, looking at her again in his sly way.