Did you notice what
he was whistling as he came along?"

"Not particularly."

"Listen: there he is again." And faint, but clear and sweet, she heard
it.

"'Sally in our Alley,'" she said, laughingly.

"Yes," answered Epstein with a chuckle.

"The dear lad," said Miss Whimple, "he's a fine fellow. And the dear
girl, the dear girl, God help her to a perfect cure."

CHAPTER XXVIII

William was William, the fun lover, still; you must not think
otherwise. True, he regarded his work more seriously than in the days
when he first engaged himself as office boy to Whimple, and his
persistency, determination, and devotion to his studies under the
tuition of Epstein were beginning, as hereinbefore chronicled, to bear
fruit. But William was William still: you read that before; it is
necessary, perhaps, to emphasise it. An irrepressible love of fun, and
a cheerful temper, continued to be his great assets; he radiated
sunshine as of yore. But back of all was a tender heart; a heart that
was rich in sympathy, and was ever responsive to appeals for help or
comfort. To his mother he continued to be a sort of puzzle; she never
really understood him, in fact, and his successes always came as a
surprise to her. Pete, curly-headed and sturdy, with his fondness for
fighting, his love of schoolboy sports, and his healthy appetite, she
could understand. But William; she used to look at him sometimes when
he was "cheering up the bunch," and wonder if she would ever just know
how much of it was earnest and just what was put on.

This attitude of his mother's troubled William more than anything else
at this period. His love for her was unalloyed by any feeling toward
any other woman or girl of his acquaintance; he often called her his
"sweetheart." He was more gentle toward her than any other member of
the household, with the exception of little deaf and dumb Dorothy, and
he continually sought her advice in matters of family interest. Yet he
knew that she brooded over him often; and because he knew the reason of
it, so keen was his intuition, he tried to reveal the real William to
her more completely than to any one else.

Miss Whimple came nearer to "diagnosing" William than any of the women
who knew him at this time.

"I've seen that boy," she said to Sally, "give his last cent to help
people in distress: I've known him to go to trouble that would worry a
grown man in order to assist some shiftless body to get a po