Conscience Book, he looked at it without a
smile, and said, wistfully,

"You think I am getting on, don't you?"

"Excellently, Dan! and I am so pleased, because I always thought you
only needed a little help to make you a boy to be proud of."

He looked up at her with a strange expression in his black eyes an
expression of mingled pride and love and sorrow which she could not
understand then but remembered afterward.

"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed, but I do try," he said, shutting the
book with no sign of pleasure in the page that he usually liked so much
to read over and talk about.

"Are you sick, dear?" asked Mrs. Jo, with her hand on his shoulder.

"My foot aches a little; I guess I'll go to bed. Good-night, mother,"
he added, and held the hand against his cheek a minute, then went away
looking as if he had said good-bye to something dear.

"Poor Dan! he takes Nat's disgrace to heart sadly. He is a strange boy;
I wonder if I ever shall understand him thoroughly?" said Mrs. Jo
to herself, as she thought over Dan's late improvement with real
satisfaction, yet felt that there was more in the lad than she had at
first suspected.

One of things which cut Nat most deeply was an act of Tommy's, for after
his loss Tommy had said to him, kindly, but firmly,

"I don't wish to hurt you, Nat, but you see I can't afford to lose my
money, so I guess we won't be partners any longer;" and with that Tommy
rubbed out the sign, "T. Bangs & Co."

Nat had been very proud of the "Co.," and had hunted eggs industriously,
kept his accounts all straight, and had added a good sum to his income
from the sale of his share of stock in trade.

"O Tom! must you?" he said, feeling that his good name was gone for ever
in the business world if this was done.

"I must," returned Tommy, firmly. "Emil says that when one man 'bezzles
(believe that's the word it means to take money and cut away with it)
the property of a firm, the other one sues him, or pitches into him
somehow, and won't have any thing more to do with him. Now you have
'bezzled my property; I shan't sue you, and I shan't pitch into you, but
I must dissolve the partnership, because I can't trust you, and I don't
wish to fail."

"I can't make you believe me, and you won't take my money, though I'd be
thankful to give all my dollars if you'd only say you don't think I took
your money. Do let me hunt for you, I won't ask any wages, but do it for
nothing. I know all the