Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/308

 She listened, rather coldly. "What do you think?" he asked, at last.

"I think you should advise her to go back to Canada. I don't see that she could do anything here."

"Unless she went on the stage," he suggested. "With her singing"

She cried out indignantly against such a proposal. He did not know what the stage was, for a girl! She would not want her worst enemy to take up that life. "It's all right," she said, "if you're born into it—if your parents are actors. But for an unprotected girl—like her—with no one to help her fight her battles"

"I thought perhaps you'd help her."

"Me? I can't fight my own! No. Tell her to stay at home. She'll regret it every day of her life, if she doesn't."

He gloomed at the pavement, in silence. She saw that he was disappointed. "Why should she bother you about it?" she demanded. "I thought she had quarrelled with you?"

"Quarrelled?"

"Yes. That day in the Park, you said"

He shook his head. "She never quarrelled with me."

"You're friends still—after what happened?"

"Nothing happened," he said. "I thought she—I misunderstood her, I suppose. It was my own fault."

"Then you want her to come here?"

Her tone did not warn him. "Ye-es," he confessed doubtfully, "if there's anything she can do."

She had released his arm. "Why?" she asked, restraining herself. "What is it? What is there between you?"