"Well, listen!" he began, and something in the blaze of his eyes, the tremolo of his erstwhile brusk voice, the warm look of his face, caught and held her attention. "Did you ever think the day would come when I'd go with a girl?"
"Who, you?" Dora sniffed. "Now I know you are kidding."
"No, I'm not," he went on, riding the tide of his joyous self-emptying. "I have done it often since I went to Cranston. I got acquainted with one up there. Sam and I board with her pa and ma. You ought to see her, Dora. She is all right—as nice and pretty as any stuck-up girl in this town. Folks up there are different—very, very different from these down here who don't know that you and I are alive. They are polite and decent and civilized. Lord! somehow it makes me sick to think of living on here, but I reckon I will. Say, did you ever notice the stunning little cottage that Sam put up for Pete Carrol on the right-hand side of the street as you go down? But never mind that. What would you think if I was to tell you that before very long I might—" John was stalled. How could he express by mere lip and tongue the transcendental thing which so completely filled him?
"What are you trying to get through yourself?" It was another of the child's picked-up expressions, and she leaned toward him with a slow leer of wonder. "What is your great secret?"
"I was coming to it," he said, his words falling steadily now. "But you mustn't tell it to a living soul. Kid, I'm thinking about getting married."
"Married—you? Huh!" Dora laughed incredulously as she plucked a pin from her lips. "Why, you are too young! I heard your ma say it would be ten years before you ever thought of it, even if you did then, you old goody-goody poke of a boy."
"I'm not too young." John flared up resentfully. "Sam says I'm not, and he ought to know. It isn't settled yet, but it will be when I get back up there. Sam says it is as good as settled now, and Sam is in a position to know. Oh, she is all right, kid—believe me, she is a wonder! I wish you could see her. She wouldn't turn up her nose at you like some folks do around here. She is sweet and kind and gentle. They are working her to death up there—her folks are, but all that will be off when I bring her down here?"
"Are you in earnest—really dead in earnest?" Dora asked, her face still blank.
"I am, and I don't want a word said about it. It is none of my mother's business, you understand. She might try to pry into it and I want her to keep out of it. This is my affair—mine and nobody's else. Sam knows it, and you, but that's all."
"I won't tell it," Dora, now convinced, declared earnestly. "I'll never tell it till you let me. Have you got a picture of her?"