Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/87

 from her on the easy condition that he should pay it back when he was able. Conroy was curious to know what his cousin was doing with his money—for he was obviously not spending it.

Don had started at his cousin's cheery shout, and jerked his hand out of the bosom of his coat, and let his arm—that had been crooked—swing ostentatiously at his side. He met Conroy with a curious expression which puzzled the boy. "What're you doing down here, anyway, Don?" he asked.

"Taking a walk. What're you?"

Conroy replied that he had been at the theatre, but he ended the explanation with a return to his curiosity regarding Don. "Working pretty hard?" "Oh yes," Don laughed. "Plugging as hard as ever."

That reference to the unmentioned cause of their separation silenced Conroy. They walked along without a word, crunching the snow under their heels. Suddenly Conroy asked: "Do you ever hear from her now?"

Don turned, with a startled "Who?"

"Margaret—Miss Richardson."

"What made you ask that?"

There was again, in his face, that faint suggestion of guilty confusion which Conroy had noticed when they met. "I don't know," the cousin answered, embarrassed. "I'd seen so little of you lately. I thought that, perhaps Jessie wrote me the other day that she'd heard she was coming here, after Christmas, to study music at the Conservatory."