Joan and Co.
she had no other concern. And though she tried now and then to open
the conversation on general topics, she did not get very far. Had it
not seemed disloyal to harbor such a thought, she would have said that
Dicky was stupid this evening. At times it seemed almost worse than
that—as though he were bored with having her here. And the pitiful part
of it all was that with both of them attending strictly to business the
work was being completed at such a rapid rate that it was soon only a
matter of minutes before it would be done and they would both be back
again in the sitting-room. Then Lord only knew when there would be
another such opportunity. Fate sometimes plays strange tricks and in
the space of a single evening erects barriers that last a lifetime. It
is difficult to foretell what is going to happen from one minute to the
next.
So they came to the last dish and he was left quite helpless with the
dishcloth in his hands.
“Hang it up nicely on the rack over the stove,” she said.
He did that. She turned and washed her hands.
“There,” she said, “I guess we’re all through now.”
She undid her apron and hung it up. Then she began to roll down her
sleeves. To him it was like a slowly descending curtain. It was the
last act of the play.
When she had done that there was no further excuse for their remaining
there. She looked at him, and as her eyes caught his the old telltale
color flooded back to her cheeks. They faced each other like that a
moment. Then from somewhere deep came a little, stifled cry.
He gripped his jaws.
“Oh, Dicky!” she repeated.
And again, as once before, the name was but a synonym for love. He
heard it this time and reason fled from him. He took her in his arms
and without a single word kissed her lips. He kissed them with the
world swimming about him—kissed them with a kiss that made them
eternally one.
In the due course of time—as far as they were concerned there was no
longer any such thing as time—they came back to the sitting-room.
“Seems to me it took you a long time to finish those dishes,” said
Burnett.
But Mrs. Burnett raised her eyes questioningly to Joan. Then she smiled
and went to her son and kissed him.
Said Burnett senior a little later in the evening as they were
discussing ways and means in a committee of the whole:
“Of course, it’s all nonsense to talk about Dicky having only fifteen
dollars a week. What’s mine is his. And if there’s anything in the
prospect of that little investment of his panning out to the extent of
ten thousand a year, it belongs to him. I loaned him the money and when
he gets ready he can pay that back. I didn’t look upon it then as an
investment, but charged it in my books against profit and loss, so I
don’t see why I should claim it now.”
Dicky jumped to his feet and clapped his father on his back.
“Why, you real old sport!” he exclaimed.
But Joan stole up to the father and placed one arm about his neck and
whispered in his ear. The others did not hear what she said. They
never heard. It remained one of the mysteries of Dicky’s whole life. It
was a secret between Joan and Burnett. As such it really is even to-day
the concern of no one else in the wide world.
However, if any one chooses to be impertinent enough to read the last
sentence, what she said was this:
“You old dear, don’t you go and spoil it all. Please don’t let him have
that money. I want him just as he is.”
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
Transcriber’s Notes
Spelling, punctuation, and hyphens standardised across the text.
p92 “Gatling gun” capitalised as a proper noun.
p215 Comma adjusted in “My boy, I’ve looked”.
p252 Hyphen removed from “staring one day overlong”.
p212 “A.E. Hartley” and p235 “E.A. Hartley”, elsewhere last name only.