Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/234

 characteristic impulse he dropped from the side-step of the car and ran after Tower to greet him.

Tower turned, startled, and shook hands, apparently confused by the surprise of an unexpected meeting.

"Where have you been? Why didn't you come to see us?"

He answered nervously: "I lost your address."

"But why didn't you You could have found me at the same place, down the Bowery?" He met Don's cordiality with a shifting eye. He coughed. "Well," he said, to tell the truth, I was ashamed to call."

Don cried: "Why?"

"Well . . . I'm his brother."

"Whose?"

"Bert's."

"Pitt's?"

"Yes."

"No! Really? Why, he'd—he'd have been delighted to" "I should have called before. He wrote me that he was coming."

"But even so, he" Don frowned over it.

Tower turned back, up the street, with him. "In the first place, I didn't want him to come—to New York."

"Why?"

"Well . . . I can't tell you that."

"Oh."

"I thought that if I didn't answer his letter, he would think better of it, and stay at college. . . . Did you tell him you'd met me?"