"As if you didn't know—as if everybody doesn't know!" Martha Jane laughed half sardonically.
"But I don't know what you mean." Something new and bountiful in its promise of joy filled John and drove the words from his palpitating tongue.
"The idea!" scoffed Martha Jane. "Well, if you don't know it you are blind as a bat in daytime. Brother knows it, I know it—everybody knows it."
"Knows what?" John demanded, his breath checked, his eyes gleaming, his whole being athrob under the dawn of an ecstasy the plain girl seemed to offer.
"Well, I'm not going to tell you, if you don't know," the girl answered, with a little shrug. "But if you want to understand, watch my poor brother. He never had a look like that before. She has been his very life. People that doubt real love ought to know Joel. He would go through fire and water for Tilly. He'd steal, he'd kill, he'd do anything. He is desperate to-night. When we got to her house and found that you and she were going to walk out here, it was the last straw. But he is a gentleman, my brother is, and he will never make a row over it."
Under the sheer blaze of this information, John stood speechless. He, boldly now, gave his arm to his little companion and they started to walk back and forth on the lawn as others were doing. His face was now turned from Tilly, but subconsciously he could fairly feel her proximity. John almost loved the little woman on his arm. How could he help it? She was so kind to him.
They were turning toward the steps when Tilly and Eperson approached. There was a wilted look of resignation on Eperson's face, a sentient animation in Tilly's eyes and about her lips, when she said to John:
"I hope you are having a good time and meeting all the girls. Sally said she would look after you."
He smiled and nodded. Something seemed to bear down on his brain and befog his sight. The lights, the lawn, the people, swirled around him.
"Yes, I'm all right," he said.