Richard insisted that we get down from the machine and enter the humble eating establishment, whose window displayed nothing more inviting than a few dozen oranges, which my practiced eye recognized as inferior sweated Southern fruit, and a black cat, the latter sound asleep.
But once entering its tiled interior, which made me oddly uncomfortable, conveying as it did a sense of being in a most dreadfully public bathroom, the refreshing odor of coffee and hot cakes revived our more material senses, and over a generous supply of both we told Dick the whole story, beginning with the moment of our arrival in the East up to the point of the aforementioned pancakes and coffee.
While Peaches was telling him about the duke and how she loved him, young Talbot could not endure to look at her—a fact of which she appeared oblivious, so wrapped was she in her recital. And it was only when she had quite finished and was waiting for him to speak that he mastered his emotions sufficiently to look at her with his honest, suffering eyes.
"So he is alive?" he said simply. "And, of course, you have to go to him, old girl. There is something wrong with this crook idea. That man is not a crook."
"Thanks, Dicky!" said Peaches, her eyes filling as she covered his hand with hers for an instant. "I know there isn't any reason to believe in him—but I do, just the same."
"But there is a reason," said Dick unexpectedly. "Look here, Peaches, I suppose I ought to have told you this when I first came back. But I didn't first off, because I found you engaged to another man and apparently happy. I didn't want to go raking over old wounds. So I didn't even speak of him except to say that I'd heard he was killed in a gallant action—and I never even said that much until you mentioned it first—do you remember?"
"Yes," she nodded. "Go on, Dicky!"
"But I'd seen him while I was over there," he said. "I—well, it was rather by accident but I happened to save his life. Oh, not the last time! Up to to-night I thought he was dead, the same as you did. But before that. It was the time I got the Italian medal——"
"So that was why you wouldn't talk about it!" I ejaculated. But neither paid any attention to me.
"He asked a lot about you," Dicky went on. "And I told him all I could. About the ranch, and what you and Miss Freedom were doing. He was just crazy to hear. But he didn't want me to tell you about him. 'I'm not fit for her, Dick,' he says to me. We was both getting over scalp wounds then and used to sit out in front of the hut and talk a lot. 'I got out of her life for her own good,' he says. 'And if it ever comes natural tell her I didn't intend to kill the chap at the railway station—it was in self-defense.' That's what he told me. And then he tried to give me a ring he had, because of me having the luck to save him, see? But I wouldn't take it. So he give me his address in case I ever needed anything."