She waved his thanks aside with her fan. “What do you mean by its being all up with you?”
“Why, if the old man sticks to his position, and I stick to March, we’ve both got to go overboard together. Dryfoos owns the magazine; he can stop it, or he can stop us, which amounts to the same thing, as far as we’re concerned.”
“And then what?” the girl pursued.
“And then, nothing—till we pick ourselves up.”
“Do you mean that Mr. Dryfoos will put you both oat of your places?”
“He may.”
“And Mr. Mawch takes the risk of that jost fo’ a principle?”
“I reckon.”
“And you do it jost fo’ an ahdeal?”
“It won’t do to own it. I must have my little axe to grind, somewhere.”
“Well, men awe splendid,” sighed the girl. “Ah will say it.”
“Oh, they’re not so much better than women,” said Fulkerson, with a nervous jocosity. “I guess March would have backed down if it hadn’t been for his wife. She was as hot as pepper about it, and you could see that she would have sacrificed all her husband’s relations sooner than let him back down an inch from the stand he had taken. It’s pretty easy for a man to stick to a principle if he has a woman to stand by him. But when you come to play it alone—”
“Mr. Fulkerson,” said the girl, solemnly, “Ah will stand bah you in this, if all the woald tones against you.” The tears came into her eyes, and she put out her hand to him.
“You will?” he shouted, in a rapture. “In every way—and always—as long as you live? Do you mean it?” He had caught her hand to his breast and was grappling it tight there and drawing her to him.
The changing emotions chased one another through her heart and over her face: dismay, shame, pride, tenderness. “You don’t believe,” she said, hoarsely, “that Ah meant that?”
“No, but I hope you do mean it; for if you don’t, nothing else means anything.”
There was no space, there was only a point of wavering. “Ah do mean it.”
When they lifted their eyes from each other again it was half-past ten. “No’ you most go,” she said.
“But the colonel—our fate?”
“The co’nel is often oat late, and Ah’m not afraid of ouah fate, no’ that we’ve taken it into ouah own hands.” She looked at him with dewy eyes of trust, of inspiration.
“Oh, it’s going to come out all right,” he said. “It can’t come out wrong now, no matter what happens. But who’d have thought it, when I came into this house, in such a state of sin and misery, half an hour ago—”
“Three houahs and a half ago!” she said. “No’ you most jost go. Ah’m tahed to death. Good night. You can come in the mawning to see—papa.” She opened the door and pushed him out with enrapturing violence, and he ran laughing down the steps into her father’s arms.
“Why, colonel! I was just going up to meet you.” He had really thought he would walk off his exultation in that direction.
“I am very sorry to say, Mr. Fulkerson,” the colonel began, gravely, “that Mr. Dryfoos adheres to his position.”
“Oh, all right,” said Fulkerson, with unabated joy. “It’s what I expected. Well, my course is clear; I shall stand by March, and I guess the world won’t come to an end if he bounces us both. But I’m everlastingly obliged to you, Colonel Woodburn, and I don’t know what to say to you. I—I won’t detain you now; it’s so late. I’ll see you in the morning. Good ni—”
Fulkerson did not realize that it takes two to part. The colonel laid hold of his arm and turned away with him. “I will walk toward your place with you. I can understand why you should be anxious to know the particulars of my interview with Mr. Dryfoos”; and in the statement which followed he did not spare him the smallest. It outlasted their walk and detained them long on the steps of the Every Other Week building. But at the end Fulkerson let himself in with his key as light of heart as if he had been listening to the gayest promises that fortune could make.
By the time he met March at the office next morning, a little, but only a very little, misgiving saddened his golden heaven. He took March’s hand with high courage, and said, “Well, the old man sticks to his point, March.” He added, with the sense of saying it before Miss Woodburn: “And I stick by you. I’ve thought it all over, and I’d rather be right with you than wrong with him.”
“Well, I appreciate your motive, Fulkerson,” said March. “But perhaps—perhaps we can save over our heroics for another occasion. Lindau seems to have got in with his, for the present.”
He told him of Lindau’s last visit, and they stood a moment looking at each other rather queerly. Fulkerson was the first to recover his spirits. “Well,” he said, cheerily, “that lets us out.”
“Does it? I’m not sure it lets me out,” said March; but he said this in tribute to his crippled self-respect rather than as a forecast of any action in the matter.
“Why, what are you going to do?” Fulkerson asked. “If Lindau won’t work for Dryfoos, you can’t make him.”
March sighed. “What are you going to do with this money?” He glanced at the heap of bills he had flung on the table between them.
Fulkerson scratched his head. “Ah, dogged if I know: Can’t we give it to the deserving poor, somehow, if we can find ’em?”
“I suppose we’ve no right to use it in any way. You must give it to Dryfoos.”
“To the deserving rich? Well, you can always find
