“O, I’m so glad, so glad!” she cried. “You don’t know what it has been to me to have Dave in the shipyard!”
“It has been a good thing,” I said stoutly. “It has been good discipline for Dave, and it has opened Cyrus’ eyes to what was fine in him. He said to me to-day that Dave had done well, that there was good stuff in him.”
Estelle was pleased, although she was too proud to show it.
“Opened your eyes, too!” she said crisply. “You were almost as hard upon him as Cyrus.” As I have remarked before, we are a plain-spoken family.
Dave seized upon his pudding like a boy, insisting upon dividing it with Alice Yorke and giving her the lion’s share of the frosting. No one would have thought, seeing how light-hearted he was, that he was living down a deep disgrace and that the shipyard was to be sold at auction for the benefit of creditors the next month. Alice Yorke was so gay that I thought my hasty whisper to her of “Dave didn’t do it” had taken a load from her heart.
I will never think I know anything about a girl’s heart again!
Estelle was merry, as I had not seen her for a long time, and that was not strange since her heart was so bound up in Dave. I knew she was eager to ask me what I knew about Dave’s trouble and how I had discovered it but her pride would not let her.
In the midst of the hilarity Estelle uttered a cry of dismay and I, following her gaze, saw a startling white face appearing above the edge of the wood-pile behind us. It vanished so suddenly that if it had not been for Estelle’s cry I should almost have thought myself the victim of a disordered imagination.
“Rob?” I cried. “It can’t be Rob!”
“It was Rob’s face,” said Estelle, with white lips—for not since his return from school had Rob been able to leave his room.