Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/20

8 had been taken to England as a child, but remembered very little of it, and nothing of Billy. Billy showed no inclination to peel his potatoes, however, and during the evening, the It and the Voices not coming on, he told him all about it. How he had left home and run to London first, because it was gloomy at home, and there was always trouble. There was big trouble, not his, but he should 'a'stayed an' shared it. He had a right in it. He hoped, with a momentary loss of himself and a fluttering raising of uncertain fingers to his temples, that "Bob," the new man, wouldn't mention a word of it in Shepparton or anywheres. He was sick an' weak, or he wouldn't have talked on it. .... "And his poor old mother!—Poor mother!" He shed tears and his voice broke into the whine that no man likes to hear. "He'd left trouble that he had as much right in as any o' them. Left poor mother dyin' broken-hearted on it, and Tom t' fight it out. Poor old Tom! Good old Tom as he was allers havin' 'dry ' words with—an' all his own fault. ..."

The stranger, who treated him as a perfectly rational being, listened with seeming interest, sympathized, soothed, and assured Billy over and over again, with astonishing patience, that it was all going to be mended and fixed up, and that Billy was going home almost directly the job was done.

About here there came what some writers call a "diversion." It certainly diverted Bogan's dreams, if he dreamed. It diverted Jack Moonlight in his quiet way, and was probably a relief to the new-comer. He heard some one, or something, coming through the