"No, not to-night," John interposed. "Some other time."
Leaving the children, he turned into his cheerless room and lighted the gas. He unpacked the valises and hung up some of his apparel under the dust-curtain. There were his working-shirts, his overalls, his coarse cap and stoggy shoes. He had bought an evening paper and he opened it out to read it, but could not fix his attention even on the boldest of the head-lines. Ridgeville, the cottage, Tilly, floated through his mind, and a pain that was both physical and mental clutched his whole being. He winced, ground his teeth together, and stifled a groan.
"It is my damned yellow streak!" he muttered. "I must get over it—kill it, pull it out by the roots. Why shouldn't I have my share of bad luck? Others have plenty of it—even women and children. Poof! Be a man, John Trott. Don't be a dirty shirker!"
A merry ripple of laughter came from the adjoining room, and he heard Dora telling of the mistake she had made on the street in Washington, and somehow he felt relieved. Surely good would come out of the plunge he had made into those unknown waters, dark and deep as they seemed. Wasn't Dora already better off? And what more could he desire than to benefit a child like that materially and lastingly?
But the pain still clung and permeated. He heard the two visitors bidding good night to Dora, and when they had gone down-stairs he went into the other room, finding the child with her doll in her arms, rocking it as a mother might a living babe.
"Now get to bed, Sis," he said, more tenderly than he had ever spoken to her before. "Do you like it here?"
"Oh, very, very much!" she cried, enthusiastically. "Betty and Minnie are the sweetest and best children I ever saw, and Harold is nice, too—nice and polite, and awfully smart. He uses big words that I never heard before. The girls want me to go with them to their school and church. May I?"
"Yes," he returned. "Now get to bed. Sleep as late as you want to in the morning. You don't have to get up before day to cook breakfast for me now, eh?"
She smiled happily, but said nothing.
He yearned to kiss her, for through her companionship in his loneliness she had become very dear to him, but that strode him as being a weak thing for a man to do, and he left her without yielding to the impulse.