CHAPTER XX
TOMMY went to the station to meet the four o’clock train from Paulding. Not finding the girls, he walked out of the village a little way over the familiar highway between the village and the town. He caught sight of them, but his heart sank. They were walking arm-in-arm. And though Betty saw him, there was no change in Rose’s manner until the other girl had had time to apprise her of his presence. It looked as if her blindness were inveterate!
He didn’t hurry until he saw that Betty’s face was bright. Then he bounded towards them as eagerly as awkwardly.
“What luck?” he asked.
Betty was prepared to meet him, but it was hard to speak.
“Tommy, I am just awfully sorry, but we can’t tell you anything, we can’t say one single thing,” she said soberly. “And please don’t say a word to anyone about the advertisement in the paper nor the doctor. It might be—O, perfectly dreadful, the very worst thing you could think of if you did. But it’s all right. Rose and I are—not excited as we were, but happy.”
“All right. Mum’s the word!” said the disappointed Tommy bravely. “I’ll never mention the paper nor anything. But—you are glad I found it?”
“Sure, Tommy,” said Rose.
“More than glad. We’re thankful beyond words,” Betty added solemnly.
“You got through early, Tommy,” observed Rose. “You said your father would keep you at it till the six o’clock whistle blew.”
“Wonders will never cease,” remarked Tommy. “Dad not only let me off early, but he even praised me for the way I’d worked—something he never did before within the memory of man. Not that he made any great splurge. He had to be grudging about it, or it wouldn’t have been dad.”
“Well, how did you work?” questioned Rose.
“I worked like a dog. I never worked so hard in my life before,” Tommy owned ingenuously. “You see my mind was on—other things. I kept wondering where you were and what you were doing and what was happening, and all the time, without thinking what I was doing, I kept working harder and faster. It ain’t that way at all when I think of magic. That doesn’t speed up work, and I don’t care. Gee! I don’t want to work at the rate I have to-day. Not on your tin-type. But I ain’t so sorry to-day.”
“Why, Tommy?” Betty asked soberly. For she feared his disappointment was so great that he welcomed physical weariness to offset it.
“Well, I’ll tell you. Seeing dad in such a pleasant frame of mind, says I to myself, ‘Here’s your chance, Finnyfish!’ So I up and proposed to him that he give me my car-fares I save by walking next term, same as your father and Rose’s do. And by gee! he up and promised! I’m weak yet from the shock!”
“O, Tommy! how splendid! You’ll be buying a bookon magic about every other week, won’t you?” asked Betty gaily.
“Who knows? I’m so used to going on with a mere pittance that I may become a miser,” returned Tommy musingly. As a matter of fact an explanation of the girls’ apparently unsuccessful return had flashed through his mind. Perhaps it cost a lot more than Betty had thought of to be cured of blindness. Specialists were very expensive, he knew, and like as not ten dollars wasn’t so much to this be-decorated Vandegrift as a dime was to him. Quite likely his fee for this cure, which was of course at the top of his list, was as much as twenty-five or fifty dollars. That evening he dropped into the Poganys’ and, the moment Aunt Sarah went out into the kitchen to make bread, turned to Betty.
“I told you this afternoon how I was so used to going without that railroad money that I hardly know what to do with it,” he said. “Well, it’s the truth that I don’t care a mite about it except for the satisfaction of getting it out of dad. If you and Rose have any use for it, you can have the whole ninety cents every week.”
“O, Tommy, what a true, true friend you are!” cried the girl with tears in her soft eyes. “We don’t need it right now, but if we should later, it would be such a comfort to know that we might have it.”
“When in doubt, consult Finnyfish,” quoth Tommy. He said no more, but decided secretly to save the money each week and have it ready in case of emergency.
As for Betty, this made it only seem the harder that they couldn’t confide in Tommy. But of course he knew in part. He couldn’t help guessing something very like the truth. They couldn’t discuss this visit and otherswith him and he couldn’t ask questions. But he couldn’t help knowing the meaning of their weekly secret visits to Millville. And he would realize that there was hope for Rose, but that the cure would take time.
But Mr. Meadowcroft wouldn’t know one thing. He hadn’t had an inkling and wouldn’t have. No one would be more gratified, more sympathetic than he; and yet he could know nothing about it. He must not even know that they had a secret. And that secret must be kept from him for six months.