Perhaps he did, but that was because he didn’t know any better just then.
He thought differently later on—but that is another story.
However, in the excitement of the moment, and, considering what he had just passed through he might be well excused, he did a very audacious thing.
He actually kissed Jennie Nesbitt then and there.
Then, realizing the enormity of his offence, he blurted out a hasty “Good night!” and flew down the stoop, leaving the lovely little blonde in a state of happy confusion we will not attempt to describe.
An hour later Dick was seated with his father in an elegant room on the third floor of the Hotel Normandie, listening to the story that father had to tell.
As Dick had guessed, his mother was dead.
She had passed away on the eve of a financial panic in Boston which had wrecked his father’s business and temporarily clouded his name with a suspicion of unfair commercial methods.
Nearly crazed by the loss of his wife, not to mention his business reverses, Mr. Armstrong in the first days of his misery fled to the recesses of New Hampshire, taking his only boy with him.
“I was shortly summoned back from Franconia by a committee of my creditors, with whom I succeeded in making a partial arrangement contingent on the success of certain mining interests I had in the West,” said Mr. Armstrong. “I sent Mr. Maslin one hundred dollars to defray your board for a certain length of time, for I could not return to you immediately as it was urgently necessary I should go at once to Colorado. Afterward I sent him other sums from the West for a like purpose. It was five years before I found myself able to return East. While not rich, I had done very well and my prospects were bright, my business troubles of the past having been entirely wiped out. When I went to Franconia I found the Maslins had moved away a short time before, leaving no clue to their new address, and from that hour to this day I never obtained a clue, even by the assistance of paid detectives, to their new home.”