Every day the Stranger came and gave me to dollars and I took him to the back road on our place and left him there. And every night, although weary unto death with washing the car, carrying people, changeing tires and picking nails out of the road which the hackman put there to make trouble, I but pretended to slumber, and instead sat up in the library and kept my terrable Vigil. For now I knew that he had dishonest designs on the sacred interior of my home, and was but biding his time.
The house having been closed for a long time, there were mice everywhere, so that I sat on a table with my feet up.
I got so that I fell asleep almost anywhere but particularly at meals, and mother called in a doctor. He said I needed exercize! Ye gods!
Now I think this: if I were going to rob a house, or comit any sort of Crime, I should do it and get it over, and not hang around for days making up my mind. Besides keeping every one tence with anxiety. It is like diving off a diving board for the first time. The longer you stand there, the more afraid you get, and the farther (further?) it seems to the water.
At last, feeling I could stand no more, I said this to the Stranger as he was paying me. He was so surprized that he dropped a quarter in the road, and did not pick it up. I went back for it later but some one else had found it.
“Oh!” he said. “And all this time I’ve been beleiving that you—well, no matter. So you think it’s a mistake to delay to long?”
“I think when one has somthing Right or Wrong to do, and that’s for your conscience to decide, it’s easier to do it quickly.”
“I see,” he said, in a thoughtfull manner. “Well, perhaps you are right. Although I’m afraid you’ve been getting one fifty cents you didn’t earn.”
“I have never hung around,” I retorted. “And no Archibald is ever a sneak.”
“Archibald!” he said, getting very red. “Why, then you are——”