“You’re anxious to go?”
“I’m going,” said Pink, cheerfully.
“Then I’d better go along and look after
you. But I tell you how I see it. After
I’ve done that I’ll go as far as you like.
Either there is nothing to it and we’re fools
for our pains, or there’s a lot to it, and in
that case we are a pair of double-distilled lunatics
to go there alone.”
Pink laughed joyously.
Life had been very dull for him since his return from
France. He had done considerable suffering and
more thinking than was usual with him, but he had
had no action. But behind his boyish zest there
was something more, something he hid as he did the
fact that he sometimes said his prayers; a deep and
holy thing, that always gave him a lump in his throat
at Retreat, when the flag came slowly down and the
long lines of men stood at attention. Something
he was half ashamed and half proud of, love of his
country.
* * *
* *
At the same time another conversation was going on
in the rear room of a small printing shop in the heart
of the city. It went on to the accompaniment
of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two
printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at
the front and rear entrances.
Doyle sat with his back to the light, and seated across
from him, smoking a cheap cigar, was the storekeeper
from Friendship, Cusick. In a corner on the table,
scowling, sat Louis Akers.
“I don’t know why you’re so damned
suspicious, Jim,” he was saying. “Cusick
says the stall about the Federal agents went all right.”
“Like a house a-fire,” said Cusick, complacently.
“I think, Akers,” Doyle observed, eyeing
his subordinate, “that you are letting your
desire to get this Cameron fellow run away with your
judgment. If we get him and Denslow, there are
a hundred ready to take their places.”
“Cameron is the brains of the outfit,”
Akers said sulkily.
“How do you know Cameron will go?”
Akers rose lazily and stretched himself.
“I’ve got a hunch. That’s
all.”
A girl came in from the composing room, a bundle of
proofs in her hand. With one hand Akers took
the sheets from her; with the other he settled his
tie. He smiled down at her.
Ellen was greatly disturbed. At three o’clock
that afternoon she found Edith and announced her intention
of going out.
“I guess you can get the supper for once,”
she said ungraciously.
Edith looked up at her with wistful eyes.
“I wish you didn’t hate me so, Ellen.”
“I don’t hate you.” Ellen was
slightly mollified. “But when I see you
trying to put your burdens on other people—”
Edith got up then and rather timidly put her arms
around Ellen’s neck.
“I love him so, Ellen,” she whispered,
“and I’ll try so hard to make him happy.”
