There was a shout from the lawn; it was only Uncle Horace calling out sharply to his horse as he mounted him, but Rob caught himself up with a terrified gasp.
“I wish you’d go away! You’ve treated Dave badly enough and now you come here and try to kill me! You needn’t think I would tell you anything if I could. Dave will be a great man yet, I’ll tell you that, in spite of those old college ninnies, and in spite of you who have treated him as if he were an outlaw. And I—I should be treated worse; he didn’t have anybody like father! Dave said he didn’t”—this came eagerly—“he said he could very well stand the blame and live it down. That’s what he said—live it down. But you go away!” The boy was positively fierce now. “You make me say things that I don’t mean to. I haven’t slept at all, scarcely at all for five nights, and you know I’m weak and you take advantage of it. Dave—even Dave takes advantage of it!” The boy burst into a passion of tears. “He won’t tell me something that I want to know; he puts me off. There’s something that he ought to have seen to and he hasn’t done it! I’m worried almost out of my mind. You—you think a lot of your old dog Gyp. What would you do if cruel things were happening to Gyp?”
I sat like a statue and listened. A ray of light seemed about to break upon me, but it was elusive.
“I can’t get at Dave because that nurse is always here and her ears are as long as from here to the river! She won’t stay away like this when he’s here. You tell Dave that I want him to see to things and let me know how they are! Tell him I shall die if he doesn’t. There’s—there’s money that I’m afraid hasn’t been paid. Nobody knows what would happen if the money wasn’t paid.”
“Do—do you mean the money that Dave borrowed?” I stammered stupidly.
“Who cares about the money that Dave borrowed from that rich fellow? Let him wait for it! He’s a sneak anyhow.”
“I don’t think you quite understand him,” I ventured, but my small protest fell unheeded.
“Girls fret themself about such small things,” continued Rob scornfully. “But they have no feeling for living things that suffer. Was it you or Estelle, who wanted me to shoot a blue jay to trim a hat? Of course a fellow pays his debts, but that isn’t all that he’s called upon to do.”
I denied the blue jay vehemently, for both Estelle and myself. I declared that none of us had ever been guilty of wearing so much as the wing of a bird upon a hat. But Rob knew that it was “some girl,” and it was “just like all of them.”
“And when your old Gyp had pneumonia you let Hiram Nute doctor him, instead of sending to the Port, for the vet.” That was Rob’s next fiercely uttered accusation.