Happiness never stayed long with Nora Sansom.  Little, indeed, had been her portion, and it was a poor sort at best.  But this new joy was so great that it must needs be short of life; and in truth she saw good reason.  From the moment of parting with Johnny doubts had troubled her; and doubts grew to distress—even to misery.  She saw no end—no end but sorrow.  She had been carried away; she had forgotten.  And in measure as her sober senses awoke she saw that all this gladness could but end in heart-break and bereavement.  Better, then, end all quickly and have done with the pang.  But herein she misjudged her strength.

Doubts and perplexities assailed Johnny also, though for a time they grew to nothing sharper.  He would have gone home straightway, proud and joyful, if a little sheepish, to tell his mother the tale of that evening.  But Nora had implored him to say nothing yet.  She wanted time to think things over, she said.  And she left him at the familiar corner, two streets beyond the Institute, begging him to come no farther, for this time, at anyrate.  Next evening was the evening of the p. 225dressmaking class.  He saw her for a few minutes, on her way through those two familiar streets, and he thought she looked unwell.

A few nights later he saw her again.  Plainly she had been crying.  When they came to a deserted street of shut-up wharves he asked her why.

“Only—only I’ve been thinking!” she said.

“What about?”

“About you, Johnny—about you and me.  We—I think—we’re very young, aren’t we?”

That had not struck him as a difficulty.  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know about that.  I s’pose we are, like others.  But I shall be out o’ my time in two years and a half, or not much more, and then—”

“Yes, then,” she said, catching at the word, “p’raps then it will be different—and—I mean we shall be older and know better, Johnny.  And—now—we can often see one another and talk like friends—and—”  She looked up to read his eyes, trembling.

Something cold took Johnny by the throat, and checked his voice.  “But—what—you don’t mean—that?”

“Yes,” she said, though it was bitter hard.  “It’ll be best—I’m sure, Johnny!”

Johnny gulped, and his voice hardened.  “Oh!” he said, “if you want to throw me over you might say so, in straight English!”

p. 226“Oh—don’t talk like that, Johnny!” she pleaded, and laid her hand on his arm.  “It’s unkind!  You know it’s unkind!”

“No—it’s only plain an’ honest.  I don’t understand this half-and-half business—seeing each other ‘like friends’ an’ all that.”

One more effort she made to hold her position—but her strength was near gone.  “It’ll be better, Johnny—truly it will!  You—you might meet someone you’d like better, and—”

“That’s my look-out; time to talk about that when it comes.  The other night you let me kiss you, and you kissed me back—told me you loved me.  Now you don’t.  Maybe you’ve met someone you like better.”

She held out no more.  Her head fell on his shoulder, and she broke into an agony of tears.  “O Johnny, Johnny, that is cruel!  You don’t know how cruel it is!  I shall never like anybody better than you—never half so much.  Don’t be unkind!  I’ve not one friend in the world but you, and I do love you more than anything.”

With that Johnny was ready to kick himself for a ruffian.  He looked about, but nobody else was in the shadowy street.  He kissed Nora, he called himself hard names, and he quieted her, though she still sobbed.  And there was no more talk of mere friendship.  She had tried her compromise, and had broken down.  But p. 227presently Johnny ventured to ask if she foresaw any difficulty with her parents.

“Father’s dead,” she said simply.  “He’s been dead for years.”  This was the first word of her family matters that Johnny had heard.  Should he come to see her mother?  The question struck her like a blow.

“No—no, Johnny,” she said.  “Not yet—no, you mustn’t.  I can’t tell you why—I can’t really; at anyrate not now.”  Then after a pause, “O Johnny, I’m in such trouble!  Such trouble, Johnny!”  And she wept again.

But tell her trouble she would not.  At anyrate not then.  And in the end she left Johnny much mystified, and near as miserable as herself, because of his blind helplessness in this unrevealed affliction.

Inexpert in mysteries, he was all incomprehension.  What was this trouble that he must not be told of?  He did not even know where Nora lived.  Why shouldn’t she tell him?  Why did she never let him see her as far as home?  This much he knew: that she had a mother, but had lost her father by death.  And this he had but just learned from her under stress of tears.  He was not to see her mother—at least not yet.  And Nora was in sore trouble, but refused to say what the trouble was.  That night he moped and brooded.  And at Maidment and Hurst’s next morning—it was Saturday—Mr. Cottam the gaffer swore, and made remarks about p. 228the expedience of being thoroughly awake before dinner-time.  More, at one o’clock Johnny passed the pay-box without taking his money, and turned back for it, when reminded, amid the chaff of his shopmates, many offers of portership, and some suggestions to scramble the slighted cash.

Not far from the yard-gate he saw a small crowd of people about a public-house; and as he neared he perceived Mother Born-drunk in the midst of it.  The publican had refused to serve her—indeed, had turned her out—and now she swayed about his door and proclaimed him at large.

“’Shultin’ a lady!” she screamed hoarsely.  “Can’t go in plashe ’thout bein’ ’shulted.  ’Shulted by low common public-’oush.  I won’t ’ave it!”

“Don’t you stand it, ducky!” sang out a boy.  “You give ’em what for!”

For a moment she seemed inclined to turn her wrath on her natural enemy, the boy, but her eye fell on a black bottle with a broken neck, lying in the gutter.&............