ow how sweet and lovely you can be, Dickie, when you're lit
up, but I guess you were awful sweet. Anyway, if you didn't say anything
or do anything to scare her, you don't deserve a kickin'. But, just the
same, I've a mind to turn you out of Millings."

This time, Dickie's look was not ironical. It was terrified. "Oh, Poppa,
say! I'll try not to do it again."

"I never heard that before, did I?" sneered Sylvester. "You put shame on
me and my bar. And I'm not goin' to stand it. If you want to get drunk
buy a bottle and come up here in your room. God damn you! You're a nice
son for the owner of The Aura!"

He stood up and looked with frank disgust at the thin, huddled figure.
Under this look, Dickie grew slowly redder and his eyes watered.

Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the
door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss
Sheila--hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and
you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans
for her. I'm her guardian--that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like
a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though
the word had a fine taste.

Dickie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his
lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old.

"Keep away from her--hear me?"

"Yes, sir," said Dickie meekly.

After his father had gone out, Dickie sat for an instant with his head
on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and
quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room
door on the outside.

"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless,
though, this morning!"

He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the partition, a
sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled.

"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized Dickie in the hollow and
unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels
about noon."

Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling.

Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in
his head and in his ankle and somewhere else--an indeterminate spot deep
in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into
the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his
attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had
frightened her--d