Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/230

220 When we were alone Mrs. Allen said quietly to Jim:— "I am very glad thee was discreet enough not to read before the child the Doctor's suspicions of Mr. Bunker. She has gratitude to him and Mrs. Bunker, and I would be sorry to have it disturbed, I fear that the Doctor is right. There was all the essence of dishonesty in the manner in which he spent thy hundred dollars for Ally."

Our sorrow at the loss of the tourmalines was soon swallowed up in our grief at the near prospect of going back to college. To leave Ally and Mrs. Allen and the Dominie was harder to me than it had ever been to leave my own home; and, as for Jim, poor boy, it was the first home he had ever known.

"If I were n't ashamed, Will," he said, "I 'd quit college and turn my back on the world and settle down here with Dominie."

"What to do, Jim?" said I. "Study and hunt, and teach Ally till she 's old enough for me to take her to Europe, replied he with kindling face. "I believe I 'd know more at the end of six years that way than I will now. College is an infernal humbug, Will, and you know it as well as I do. Have n't we learnt more in these six months with Dominie than in all the rest of our lives put together? Anyhow, I 'm thankful Ally 's got such a home. Blessed little angel, how could I ever have thought of her being marched up and down the streets in those processions of boarding-school girls, and