When Mr. Chester had been there a week, he gave Dorothy two worn and crumpled two-dollar bills.
“What’s this?” she asked, curiously. “Where did you find it?”
“‘Find it’ is good,” laughed Dick. “I earned it, my dear lady, in hard and uncongenial toil. It’s my week’s board.”
“You’re not going to pay any board here. You’re a guest.”
“Not on your life. You don’t suppose I’m going to sponge my keep off anybody, do you? I paid Uncle Ebeneezer board right straight along and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t pay you. You can put that away in your sock, or wherever it is that women keep money, or else I take the next train. If you don’t want to lose me, you have to accept four plunks every Monday. I’ve got lots of four plunks,” he added, with a winning smile.
“Very well,” said Dorothy, quite certain that she could not spare Dick. “If it will make you feel any better about staying, I’ll take it.”
He had quickly made friends with Elaine, and the three made a more harmonious group than might have been expected under the circumstances. With returning strength and health, Miss St. Clair began to take more of an interest in her surroundings. She gathered the white clover blossoms in which Dorothy tied up her pats of sweet butter, picked berries in the garden, skimmed the milk, helped churn, and fed the chickens.
Dick took entire charge of the cow, thus relieving Mrs. Smithers of an uncongenial task and winning her heartfelt gratitude. She repaid him with unnumbered biscuits of his favourite kind and with many a savoury “snack” between meals. He also helped Dorothy in many other ways. It was Dick who collected the eggs every morning and took them to the sanitarium, along with such other produce as might be ready for the market. He secured astonishing prices for the things he sold, and set it down to man’s superior business ability when questioned by his hostess. Dorothy never guessed that most of the money came out of his own pocket, and was charged up, in the ragged memorandum book which he carried, to “Elaine’s board.”
Miss St. Clair had never thought of offering compensation, and no one suggested it to her, but Dick privately determined to make good the deficiency, sure that a woman married to “a writing chump” would soon be in need of ready money if not actually starving at the time. That people should pay for what Harlan wrote seemed well-nigh incredible. Besides, though Dick had never read that “love is an insane desire on the part of a man to pay a woman’s board bill for life,” he took a definite satisfaction out of this secret expenditure, which he did not stop to analyse.
He brought back full price for everything he took to the “repair-shop,” as he had irreverently christened the sanitarium, though he seldom sold much. On the other side of the hill he had a small but select graveyard where he buried such unsalable articles as he could not eat. His appetite was capricious, and Dorothy had frequently observed that when he came back from the long walk to the sanitarium, he ate nothing at all.