"
"Nobody understands. There's something back of it, and meantime people
are calling him a coward--"
"Doesn't look like a slacker."
"He isn't. I have sometimes thought," said wise Drusilla, "that it
might be his father. He's a gay old bird, and Derry has to jack him
up."
"Drink?"
"Yes. They say that Derry has followed him night after night--getting
him home if he could; if not, staying with him."
"Hard lines--"
"And yet he is asking little Jean to marry him. I wonder if she will
keep step with him."
"Why shouldn't she?"
"Because Derry is going to travel far and fast in the next few months,"
Drusilla prophesied.
Her face settled into tired lines. For the first time the Captain saw
her divorced from her radiance. He set himself to cheer her.
"What is troubling you, dear woman?"
She was very frank, and she told him the truth. "I should have been
glad to keep step with him myself."
He laid his hand over hers. "If you had, where would I be? From the
moment I saw you, you filled my heart."
So, after all, she had been to him from the first, not a type but a
woman. It had come to him like that, but not to her.
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