Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/161

 you might never come back. Then I'd die. What? I know that? Yes, I know that too. Of course you are not worthy. Who said you were? There's some mud on your lip, Reddy Armstrong, that came off my riding-boot. Wipe it away. And there's something else there I don't like. It's not a bit nice; it's white and it's bristly. Shave it! Do you hear me? How dare you come into my presence with that thing! Go!" But there were big tears in the girl's eyes.

Reddy watched her gallop away into the sunset. Then he turned back, loathing himself, and wondering what a strange thing was the love of a girl.

He had done all he could. He had told her. She knew now. Yet she would not let him go. So far as he could see, the only thing for him to do was to stop short, and make a man of himself, which he did.

But that was not the only thing to be done. What sort of a fellow he had been she might know or make a guess at. There was one thing she did not know, and never should, if he could help it. In one way it was worse