“It's too soon to discuss that. We are obligated to do a certain amount. Of course it would be wise to cut where we can.”
Graham smiled.
“She'll raise the deuce of a row,” was his comment.
It had never occurred to him before to take sides between his father and his mother, but there was rising in him a new and ardent partisanship of his father, a feeling that they were, in a way, men together. He had, more than once, been tempted to go to him with the Anna Klein situation. He would have, probably, but a fellow felt an awful fool going to somebody and telling him that a girl was in love with him, and what the dickens was he to do about it?
He wondered, too, if anybody would believe that his relationship with Anna was straight, under the circumstances. For weeks now he had been sending her money, out of a sheer sense of responsibility for her beating and her illness. He took no credit for altruism. He knew quite well the possibilities of the situation. He made no promises to himself. But such attraction as Anna had had for him had been of her prettiness, and their propinquity. Again she was girl, and that was all. And the attraction was very faint now. He was only sorry for her.
When she could get about she took to calling him up daily from a drug-store at a near-by corner, and once he met her after dark and they walked a few blocks together. She was still weak, but she was spiritualized, too. He liked her a great deal that night.
“Do you know you've loaned me over a hundred dollars, Graham?” she asked.
“That's not a loan. I owed you that.”
“I'll pay it back. I'm going to start to-morrow to look for work, and it won't cost me much to live.”
“If you send it back, I'll buy you another watch!”