"No insolence, young man, no insolence," retorted Billy, with a face grave and serious, save for a joyful smile in his eyes.

"Close the store door, Billy Little," said Dic, after a few minutes of conversation, "and come back to the room. I want to talk to you."

"The conceit of some people!" replied the happy merchant. "So you would have me close my emporium for the sake of your small affairs?"

"Yes," responded Dic.

"Well, nothing wins like self-conceit," answered Billy. "Here's the key.

Lock the front door, and I'll be with you when I fold this bolt of India silk."

Dic locked the door, Billy finished folding the India silk--a bolt of two-bit muslin,--and the friends went into the back room.

How sweet it is to prepare one's self deliberately for good news! Billy, in a glow of joy, lighted his pipe, moved his chair close to the fireplace, for the day was cold, and gave the word of command--"Go ahead!"

Dic told him all that had happened in Miss Tousy's parlor, omitting, of course, to mention the blank hour, and added: "I had a letter from Rita this morning, and she feels as I do, that we are very cruel; but she says she would rather be selfish and happy than unselfish and miserable, which, as you know, is not at all true. She couldn't be selfish if she were to try."

"Good little brain in that little head," exclaimed Billy. "There never was a better. But, as you say, she's wrong in charging herself with selfishness. I believe she has more common sense, more virtue, more tenderness, gentleness, beauty, and unselfishness than any other girl in the world."

Dic laughed, very much pleased with his friend's comments upon Rita. "I believe you are in love with her yourself."

The shaft unintentionally struck centre and Billy's scalp blushed as he haltingly remarked, "Well, I suppose you're right." Then after a long pause--"Maxwelton's braes, um, um, um." Another long pause ensued, during which Billy knocked the ashes from his pipe against the wall of the fireplace, poked the back-log, and threw on two or three large pieces of wood.

"I don't mind telling you," he said, chuckling with laughter, "that I was almost in love with her at one time. She was so perfect--had the same name, face, and disposition of--of another that--Jove! I was terribly jealous of you."

"Nonsense," answered Dic, with a great pleased laugh.

"Of course it was nonsense. I knew it then and know it now; but when, let me ask you, had nonsense or any other kind of sense anything to do with a man falling in love?"

"I think it the most sensible thing a man can do," answered Dic, out of the fulness of his cup of youth.

"Has it made you happy?"

"Yes, and no."

"But mostly no?" responded the cynic.

"Yes, Billy Little, so far it's been mostly no; but the time will come when I will be very happy because of it."

"Not if you can help it. We will see how it turns out in the end."

"Billy Little, you are the greatest croaker I ever knew," observed Dic, testily.

"It is better to croak early than to sing too soon. But what do you want?"

"I want to know again what I shall do about Sukey since this new change in Rita. When I thought Rita was lost to me, I fear I permitted Sukey to believe I would, you know, comply with her wishes; but now I can't, and I don't know how to tell her about it. I said nothing, but my silence almost committed me."

After a moment spent in thought, Billy answered: "Frederick the Great used to say, 'In default of unanswerable arguments it is better to express one's self laconically and not go beating about the bush.' Go tell her."

"That's easier to advise than to do," retorted Dic. "She will cry, and--"

"Yes, I know; if it were as easy to do as it is to advise, this would be a busy world. She will cry, and a woman's tears hurt the right sort of man. But bless my soul, Dic, why don't you settle your own affairs? I'm tired of it all. It's getting to trouble me as much as it troubles you."

Billy paused, gazing into the fire, and dropped into a half-revery. "I can see the poor little dimpler weeping and grieving. I can hear her sobs and feel her heartaches. She is not good; but the fault is not hers, and I wish I might bear her pain and suffer in her stead. I believe it hurts me more to see others suffer than to suffer myself. I wish I might bear every one's suffering and die on a modern Calvary.

What a glorious thought that is, Dic--the Master's vicarious atonement!

Even if the story be nothing but a fable, as some men claim, the thought is a glorious one, and the fate--ah, the fate--but such a fate is only for G.o.d. If I can't help the suffering of the world, I wish I might live in the midst of Sahara, where I could not hear of human pain. It hurts me, Dic. Indeed it does. And this poor little dimpler--I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Ah, Billy Little, think of my sorrow," said Dic.

"It's a question whether we should shrink from our troubles or face them," continued Little; "but in your case I should choose the shrinking, and write to the poor, pathetic little dimpler. Poor thing!

Her days of dimpling are over. If you knew that you had led her astray, your duty, I believe, would be clear; but there is the 'if' that gives us serious pause and makes cowards of us both. Write to her, Dic. You are too great a coward to face her, and I'm not brave enough even to advise it."

Dic wrote to Sukey, and avoided the pain of facing her, but not the pain of knowing that she suffered. His letter brought an answer from Sukey that was harder to bear than reproaches.

Within two or three days Sukey wrote to Rita, whom she knew to be the cause of Dic's desertion. The letter to Rita, like the one to Dic, contained no word of reproach. "I do not blame you for keeping him," she said in closing. "He has always belonged to you. I hope you will be happy and not trouble yourselves about me. No one knows about this terrible affair, Rita, but you and Dic, and I hope you will tell n.o.body.

Especially, please, please, don't tell Tom. This is the only request I make: don't let Tom know anything about it. I want to confess, Rita, that I have been very wicked, and that Dic is not to blame. I feel it my duty to tell you this, so that you may not blame him. I have brought trouble to you both, and it is as little as I should do to tell you the truth. The fault was mine. I gave him a love powder. But I loved him."

Sukey's letter came one morning four or five days before Christmas. Rita wept all day over it, and at night it helped her in taking a step that settled all the momentous questions touching Dic and herself.

On the same fateful day Mr. Bays and Tom came home together in the middle of the afternoon. That unwonted event was, in itself, alarming.

Rita was reading near the window, and her mother was knitting before the fire. When our Toms, father and son, entered the room, trouble was plainly visible upon their faces. Tom senior threw his cap and great fur coat on the bed, while De Triflin' leaned against the mantel-shelf.

Drawing a chair to the fire, Tom the elder said:--

"Well, Margarita, I guess we're ruined--Jim and me and Tom--all of us. I see no earthly way out of it."

"What's the matter?" asked Madam Jeffreys, folding her knitting and placing it in her lap with great deliberation. Rita dropped her book, and went over to her father.

"Williams, I suppose?" queried Madam Jeffreys.

"Yes; he has had orders from home to collect the money we owe the house, or else to take the store, the farm, our household furniture, everything, at once. Williams leaves for home Christmas Day, and everything must be settled before then. He gives us till to-morrow noon to raise the money. But that is not the worst," continued Mr. Bays, nervously, rising and turning his back to the fire, "Tom has--has overdrawn his account more than a thousand dollars in Williams's office.

Williams don't call it 'overdrawn.' He calls it embezzlement, theft. Tom and me went to Judge Blackford and told him just how the money was taken. The Judge says Williams is right about it; it is embezzlement, and Williams says the firm insists on prosecuting Tom and sending him to the penitentiary if the money is not replaced. G.o.d only knows what we are to do, Margarita. The farm is mortgaged for its full value, and so far as I can see we are ruined, ruined." Tears began to flow over his cheeks, and Rita, drawing his face down to hers, stood on tiptoe and tried to kiss the tears away.

"Let me go to see Billy Little," she said in desperation. "He will lend us the money; I know he will."

"Like h--he will," cried gentle Tom. "Dic asked him to loan me enough money to pay my overdraft--said he would go on the note--but he refused point blank; said the twenty-three hundred dollars he loaned father and Uncle Jim Fisher was all the money he had. The miserly old curmudgeon!"

Mrs. Bays went weeping to Tom's side. "Poor Tom, my dear, dear son," she whimpered, trying to embrace him.

Dear son roughly repulsed her, saying: "There's no need to go outside of our family for help. If Rita wasn't the most selfish, ungrateful fool alive, she'd settle all our troubles by one word."

"Would you have me sell myself, Tom?" asked the ungrateful sister.

"Of course I would!! sell yourself!! rot!! You'd be getting a mighty good price. There's lots better-looking girls 'en you would jump at the chance. Sell yourself? Ain't Williams a fine gentleman? Where's another like him? Ain't he rich? Ain't he everything a girl could want in a man--everything but a green country clodhopper?"

"All that may be true, Tom, but I can't marry him. I can't," returned Rita, weeping and sobbing in her father's arms.

"Can't you, Rita?" asked Mr. Bays. "All that Tom says about him is true, every word. Williams is good enough for any girl in the world but you.

No man is that. You would soon forget Dic."

"No, no, father, never, never, in all my life."