Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/119

 his eyes. Then he clapped Edward cheerfully on the back and exclaimed:

"And you've got to do me a favor too, young man—you've got to grow up to be as good a man as your brother John."

To run off to sea without doing something to square matters for the Jackson girl never entered John's head. So he got off the train at the old familiar Westchester station, left his valise with the ticket agent, who remembered him, and set out on the old familiar walk of his school days. He felt immensely older and very sad.

Here was the shop where the children used to buy "suckums" and licorice "shoe laces." Next the fork of the roads with the triangular blacksmith shop. And John still saw and admired through the open door in the murky light the skilled play of the old smith's vast brown muscles.

The harness shop came next, the littlest shop in the world, with the family quarters above it. There was a "For Sale" sign on the building, but in answer to John's knocking the Jackson girl herself came to the door. It was obvious that she had relied on John's promise. For she had put on her best dress and done all she could to make herself look neat and attractive. But her face fell when she saw that John was unaccompanied.