"'I have not found such faith,--no, not in Israel!'" quoted
Brice, a new note in his voice which somehow stirred the
embarrassed girl's heart. "You have only my bare word that
I'm not a panhandler or a crook. And yet you believe in me
enough to--"
"You will let me?" she urged, eagerly. "Say you will! Say
it."
"I'll make cleaner use of your faith," he returned, "by asking
you to say a good word for me to your brother, if ever I come
back here looking for a job. No, no!" he broke off, fiercely,
before she could answer. "I don't mean that. You must do
nothing of the kind. Forget I asked it."
With which amazing outburst, he turned on his heel, ran across
the lawn, leaped the low privet hedge which divided it from
the coral road, and made off at a swinging pace in the
direction of Coconut Grove and Miami.
"What a fool--and what a cur--a man can make of himself," he
muttered disgustedly as he strode along, without daring to
look back at the wondering little white-clad figure, watching
him out of sight around the bend, "when he gets to talking
with a woman--a woman with--with eyes like hers! They--why,
they make me feel as if I was in church! What sort of
bungling novice am I, anyhow, for work like this?"
With a grunt of self-contempt, he drove his hands deep into
the pockets of his shabby trousers and quickened his pace.
His fingers closed mechanically around a roll of bills, of
very respectable size, in the depths of his right-hand pocket.
The gesture caused a litter of small change to give forth a
muffled jingle. A sense of shame crept over the man, at the
contact.
"She wanted to lend me money!" he muttered, half-aloud.
"Money! Not give it to me, as a beggar, but to lend it to
me.... Her nose has the funniest little tilt to it! And she
can't be an inch over five feet tall! ... I'm a wall-eyed
idiot!"
He stood aside to let two cars pass him, one going in either
direction. The lamps of the car from the west, traveling
east, showed him for a moment the occupant of the car that was
moving westward. The brief ray shone upon a pair of shoulders
as wide as a steam radiator. They were clad in loose-fitting
white silk. Above them a thick golden beard caught the ray of
shifting light. Then, both cars had passed on, and Brice was
resuming his trudge.
"Milo Standish!" he mused, looking back at the car as it
vanished in a cloudlet of white coral-dust. "Milo Standish!
... As big as two elephants .... 'The bigger they are, the
harder they fall.'"
The road curved, from the Standish estate, in almost a "C"
formation, before straightening out, a mile to the north, into
the main highway. Gavin Brice had just reached the end of the
"C" when there was a scurrying sound behind him, in a
grapefruit grove to his right. Something light and agile
scrambled over the low coral-block wall, and flung itself
rapturously on him.
It was Bobby Burns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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