"My mother is sick, she cries so much," he said with a manly struggle
that drowned the sob in his throat. "I don't know what to do. Do you
know?"
"I'll find out," I said with a sudden fierceness as I strained him
against my shoulder for an instant and then sat up in bed as if I must
do something at once.
"I must run right back and tie myself before he wakes up and whips me,"
the Stray said, and it sickened me to see him wrap the gnawed rope
around his little arm.
"No!" I exclaimed, and held out my arms to him.
"I must, but I don't mind whippings if I can read books in school and
you make mother not cry," and before I could stop him he ran out of the
dim room and I could hear his cautious bare feet patter down the long
stairway and hall.
That moonlight tryst was the last of the adventure, but I did not worry,
for I knew that the school would be opened formally in ten days, and I
had laid my plans for Stray in an interested friendship with the very
competent young woman who had already come down from the state normal
college to teach the amalgamated young ideas of Goodloets to shoot.
Also, I had vague plans that hurt me, of getting Jessie or Harriet to
continue the trysts for me after the wedding, whose details they were
all pushing to completion by a mid-September day.
And added to the strenuosity of the laying of my plans for at least a
year's absence, I had to help father make his arrangements for a six
months' stay in Washington, for he had accepted the President's
appointment on the Commerce Commission, and night and day he was at his
library desk. The silver-topped decanter still stood on the sideboard in
the dining room, and the silver ice bowl was formally filled before
every meal by Dabney. The mint glass was kept fresh and fragrant but
apparently father had forgotten entirely about all three. He ate twice
as much as I had ever seen him consume and the worn lines in his face
were slowly filling out into a delicious joviality. Mr. Hicks, the
little tailor who had always clothed him, had little by little made over
the outer man with new garments as the old ones grew restrictive, and
Mother Spurlock had carried his entire discarded wardrobe, garment at a
time, down to the Settlement for the clothing of some of her most needy
friends.
But the most reborn person I had ever seen was Dabney. The little black
man had lived so long under the shadow of father's moroseness that when
the pressure was lifted from his bent black shoulders he rebounded to an
amazing extent. His reaction took the form of gala attire in which
Nickols encouraged him to the extent of silk hosiery of the most
delicate shades from his own wardrobe, with ties to match, not to
mention his own last year's Panama hat, pressed over into the extreme of
the prevailing style for youthful masculine head adornment. Also Nickols
bestowed upon him a very up-to-date Palm Beach suit, purchased at the
Hicks shop, and on his first appearance in the kitchen for his wife's
inspection I was present.