"I was thinking of Jerry. If he's as fine as you say he is——"
"He is!"
"Then I think it's pretty mean not to play fair with him, don't you? Come," said Jane with a brisk heartiness she was far from feeling, "tell him to-day, right now, when you go back."
She shook a stubborn head. "Now you're being just like all the rest of 'em. I thought you sort of—understood."
"I think I do. But I believe you must tell him."
"Well, it's too late now. Irene's coming today to take Billiken. It's all settled and everything. It's too late now, even if I wanted to. Besides"—she flamed with hot color again—"I couldn't tell him in the daytime ... right there in the store!"
"Oh, Ethel—in anything so big,—something that means your whole life,—time and place can't matter."
The girl began to dab at her eyes with a damp, small wad of blue-bordered handkerchief. "I just couldn't tell him in the daytime. I nearly did, last night. I meant to, 'cross-my-heart,' I did! We went for a walk, and I was just—just sort of beginning when a woman came sneaking by and—said something to him. You know. And he said—'Poor devil!' That's what he called her. 'Poor devil!' That's just how he said it." Now she dropped her inadequate handkerchief and wept convulsively into her hands and a thin shaft of sunshine lighted up the meager solitaire.
Billiken leaned forward, her fat, small face filled with contrition and patted her mother on her bowed head. "Billiken gob—gobble din—din! Muddie not cly!"
It seemed to Jane that she was marching endlessly round a Jericho with walls that reached to the sky with a flimsy tin toy trumpet in her hands. How blow a blast to shatter them? "Ethel, the only thing you can bring him is the truth. Are you going to give him a lie for his wedding gift?"