“Yes, I am,” replied Granville, meeting her look firmly.
Suddenly he felt Abby's little, meagre, bony hand close over the back of his, holding the kerosene-can. “You're a good fellow, Granville Joy,” said she.
Granville marched on and made no response. He felt his throat fill with sobs, and swallowed convulsively. Along with this womanly compassion came a compassion for himself, so hurt on his little field of battle. He saw his own wounds as one might see a stranger's.
“Think of Ellen dogging around to a shoe-shop like me and the other girls,” said Abby, “and think of her draggin' around with half a dozen children and no money. Thank the Lord she's lifted out of it. It ain't you nor me that ought to grudge her fortune to her, nor wish her where she might have been otherwise.”
“That's so,” said the young man.
Abby's hand tightened over the one on the kerosene-can. “You are a good fellow, Granville Joy,” she said again.
Chapter XXV
Robert Lloyd was sitting on the veranda behind the green trail of vines when Ellen came up the walk. He never forgot the girl's face looking over her bunch of sweet-peas. There was in it something indescribably youthful and innocent, almost angelic. The light from the window made her hair toss into gold; her blue eyes sought Cynthia with the singleness of blue stars. It was evident whom she had come to see. She held out her flowers towards her with a gesture at once humble and worshipful, like that of some devotee at a shrine.
She said “Good-evening” with a shy comprehensiveness, then, to Cynthia, like a child, “I thought maybe you would like some of my sweet-peas.”
Both gentlemen rose, and Risley looked curiously from the young girl to Cynthia, then placed his chair for her, smiling kindly.