If it had been one of the Palmyra girls, with whom he had been acquainted from childhood, I should not have thought it strange; but Alice Yorke had come from the city, and there was about her an air of elegance and high-breeding that seemed to set her worlds apart from a workman in overalls. But she evidently thought no more about that little matter than did Dave, for they were having a most merry and sociable time.
The skate mending took a long time; none of the party seemed in a hurry. Dave’s capacious overalls’ pockets failed to yield a piece of string that was needed and I went into the little counting-house in search of it. I had seen a shadow across the window that I knew was Cyrus’ tall angular form, and I wondered why he did not come out and join the party. We fancied, although it was an astonishing thing to fancy of Cyrus, that he went wherever he was likely to meet Alice Yorke. He groped near-sightedly for the string in a drawer of his desk. He did not say a word and his lips were tightly compressed.
My feelings were queerly divided. I was conscious that I had been having a pride in Dave’s manliness that had made me almost forget his moral failings. I read in Cyrus’ dark face that he was both ashamed of Dave and a little jealous of him; we all think we can read the faces of our own, and are often as blind as moles.
No, Cyrus would not come out; he was busy. But I knew that he continued to pace the office floor after I had gone, as he had done before I came.
Alice Yorke and Dave were still keeping up their gay trifling, but Alice turned her head eagerly toward the counting-house door as it closed upon me, and she looked a little disappointed—at least a little crest-fallen, when she saw that I was alone. Perhaps she was not content, like the Palmyra girls, with one string to her bow, I thought a little bitterly, for I didn’t want either of my boys played with, mouse-fashion, by a mischief of a girl.
“Good gracious, you don’t think you have to take care of Cyrus, do you?” Octavia had said to me scornfully.
But I still thought that Cyrus might have his weaknesses, like any one else. It seemed to me that when one was enduring a long strain of painful duty and self-sacrifice, it might be just the time when a little consoling sweetness would easily reach his heart.
Dave walked home with me. I had waited for him after Alice and her father had gone skating off over the rough surface of the river. His working hours were soon over in these short winter days.
“There are so few men now, Dave,” I said wonderingly, as I watched the dark shapes that plodded off in the wintry dusk.
“Another cut-down,” Dave answered shortly.