Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/69

Rh briety of John Gault. In the loneliness of the street his laughter resounded deep and loud. Letitia looked at him with moody disfavor as he stood, his face flushed, his eyes suffused with moisture, and fairly roared. Letitia's eyes were threatened with a moisture of a different kind.

"Oh, dear Tishy," he said, when his paroxysm was over, taking one of her hands and holding it tightly, "what a sage you are! How good of you to warn me! With you to take care of me, I ought never to come to any harm."

"I guess you never would," said Letitia, with a little sigh. "Certainly I know enough to know that that woman is not a good person to trust—or even to know," added the mentor, with an accent of warning, and staring at him with large, cautioning eyes from under her hat-brim.

Her companion was threatened with another outburst.

"Oh, Letitia, don't be so funny," he said. "I have n't laughed as much as this for a month."

He took her hand and, drawing it inside his arm, pressed it against his heart; then, looking down at her with eyes still full of laughter, but touched with tenderness, he said:

"To think of Letitia Mason taking the trouble to give me good advice!"

Letitia was mollified, less by his words than