"Oh, damn!" and he turned to move away.
His utter ignorance coupled with his rudeness, made his companion, despite her well-laid plan, cry out, "I've something for you to see; it was in one of my newspapers. It concerns you and you ought to know. It's about——"
"Put the old thing in my room," he called back as he walked down the street.
Watching his fast disappearing figure, Mrs. Pickens decided that was just what she would do. He should read the tale for himself, and she would then have the privilege of giving him advice and comforting sympathy. She would put the paper where it would greet him when he returned. She went within, very much excited, and upon his cluttered bureau, with his traveling case tumbling its contents over the fresh linen cover, she laid the important sheet. That it might at once convey the desired news she marked the paragraph with a pencil lying at hand. "Will he mind so very much?" she asked herself. "It's all in the past." And then, expectant, hoping that in the end all would come out right with the young people, she left the room.
Dick, for his part, as he walked off forgot his landlady in his dismay at the thought that Hertha might go away. He had made so many plans for those vacation days! He was hot with disappointment when a stumbling step made him glance down to be soothed by the sight of his white flannels. The remembrance of Hertha's half promise to play tennis made him believe that no governess' place was yet secured, and he resolved to buy a net the next morning that they might that afternoon start in to play. They would play Sunday, too, if she desired. The devil might get him for a Sabbath breaker for all he cared! The grim imagery of his religious teaching came to him and he pictured Hertha and himself, tennis rackets in hand, dragged down to the fiery pit. Then he smiled whimsically. His Georgia home with all its crudities, its rough, unpainted houses, its poorly tilled fields, its ignorant, frenzied religion was immeasurably far away. Turning to the present and its shining hope he followed his lode-star down the street.
CHAPTER XXXIII
It was the first hot evening of summer. Families were sitting on door-steps and verandas breathing in the night air as it came up from the city's baking streets, hoping for a refreshing ocean breeze. But no breeze came, the leaves on the trees hung motionless, and the smoke from the chimneys moved in a straight line upward. Dick found Hertha alone on the stoop with Bob, and man and boy exchanged pleasantries, the latter exhibiting much pride at his ability to make jokes. To Dick's surprise Hertha was the first to make a movement to go. Kissing the child good-night, and laying her hand for a second on Dick's arm, she walked with him along the street. Bob, though disconsolate, made no attempt to follow them, knowing that with growing darkness it was wisest for him to be inconspicuous, a small figure in the shadow whom parents might forget and fail to send early to bed.
The two figures whom his eyes followed did not go back toward their home but crossed the avenue at the entrance to the park. They walked very slowly, stopping as they reached the first group of trees. He wondered what they were saying. Perhaps Miss Ogilvie was telling Dick one of her stories.
What she was saying was this: "I've something to tell you about myself but I don't know how to begin."