Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/66

56 laughed, for Bert’s chronic devotion to the game was the joke of all his friends.

But the next moment Bess felt Fred’s head come over against her shoulder. Rob watched him pityingly, not daring to speak his sympathy, though he read his friend’s thought.

“We’ve been reading ‘Story of a Bad Boy,’ this afternoon,” said Bess, trying once more to start the boys. Rob caught eagerly at the bait.

Isn’t it fine! That Fourth of July scrape just suits me.”

And the boys were all animated as they discussed the details of the story. Bess sat and watched them, occasionally putting in a word or two, and soon all constraint had vanished, as the talk ran on from subject to subject, and the long year of separation was a thing of the past.

Rob, mindful of what Bess had told him about Fred’s sensitive reserve, tried to seem  perfectly unconscious of the change in his boy  friend, but he looked anxious and troubled, between his sympathy for Fred, and his desire to say just the right thing. But when Bess rose to go, and Fred was slowly following her to the door, Rob could stand it no longer.