mforting
sympathy. She would put the paper where it would greet him when he
returned. She went within, very much excited, and upon his cluttered
bureau, with his traveling case tumbling its contents over the fresh
linen cover, she laid the important sheet. That it might at once convey
the desired news she marked the paragraph with a pencil lying at hand.
"Will he mind so very much?" she asked herself. "It's all in the past."
And then, expectant, hoping that in the end all would come out right
with the young people, she left the room.

Dick, for his part, as he walked off forgot his landlady in his dismay
at the thought that Hertha might go away. He had made so many plans for
those vacation days! He was hot with disappointment when a stumbling
step made him glance down to be soothed by the sight of his white
flannels. The remembrance of Hertha's half promise to play tennis made
him believe that no governess' place was yet secured, and he resolved to
buy a net the next morning that they might that afternoon start in to
play. They would play Sunday, too, if she desired. The devil might get
him for a Sabbath breaker for all he cared! The grim imagery of his
religious teaching came to him and he pictured Hertha and himself,
tennis rackets in hand, dragged down to the fiery pit. Then he smiled
whimsically. His Georgia home with all its crudities, its rough,
unpainted houses, its poorly tilled fields, its ignorant, frenzied
religion was immeasurably far away. Turning to the present and its
shining hope he followed his lode-star down the street.

CHAPTER XXXIII

It was the first hot evening of summer. Families were sitting on
door-steps and verandas breathing in the night air as it came up from
the city's baking streets, hoping for a refreshing ocean breeze. But no
breeze came, the leaves on the trees hung motionless, and the smoke from
the chimneys moved in a straight line upward. Dick found Hertha alone on
the stoop with Bob, and man and boy exchanged pleasantries, the latter
exhibiting much pride at his ability to make jokes. To Dick's surprise
Hertha was the first to make a movement to go. Kissing the child
good-night, and laying her hand for a second on Dick's arm, she walked
with him along the street. Bob, though disconsolate, made no attempt to
follow them, knowing that with growing darkness it was wisest for him to
be inconspicuous, a small figure in the shadow whom parents might forget
and fail to send early