VI.—Father Mack.
“Give up Saint Andrew’s!” repeated Father Mack in a low, startled voice. “You, Dan! Give up! Oh, no, my boy,—no!”
“Aunt Winnie will die if I don’t,” blurted out Dan, despairingly. “Pete Patterson says so. And I can take her home and give her back her little rooms over Mulligans’, and the blue teapot and Tabby, and everything she loves. And Pete says I can work up to be his partner.”
“His partner,—his partner! In what?” asked Father Mack, anxiously.
“Meat business,” answered Dan. “He’s made money, and he’s going in for it big,—corning, smoking, sausage, everything. I—I could take care of Aunt Winnie fine.”
“Meat business, sausage? I don’t think I understand,” said Father Mack, in bewilderment. “Sit down here, Dan, and tell me all this over again.”
Dan took his seat on a broken slab that had been a gravestone before the old college cemetery had been condemned and removed beyond the limits of the growing city. It was a very old slab, bearing the Latin title of some Brother or Father who had died fifty years ago. The sunset fell through a gap in the pines that showed the western sky, with its open gates, their pillars of cloud and fire all aglow.
“Tell me slowly, calmly, Dan. My ears are growing dull.”
And Dan told his story again, more clearly and less impetuously; while Father Mack listened, his bent head haloed by the setting sun.
“I can’t let Aunt Winnie die,” concluded Dan. “You see, I have to think of Aunt Winnie, Father.”