spelling; and other
kids start the graphophone, and Aggie is expected to ask her young man
to walk right in. So after that she meets him in the street, and the
girls begin to talk about Aggie."

"Oh, Barry, I'm so glad you're interested!" Standing a step above him,
Sidney's ardent face was very close to his own. "Of course we can do
it," she said.

"We!" he echoed almost bitterly. "YOU'LL do it; you're the one--" He
broke off with a short, embarrassed laugh. "I was going to cut that
sort of thing out," he said gruffly, "but all roads lead to Rome, it
seems. I can't talk to you five minutes without--and I've got to go. I
said I'd look in at the office."

"You seem to be afraid to be friendly lately, Barry," said Mrs.
Burgoyne in a hurt voice, flinging away the rose she had been holding,
"but don't you think our friendship means something to me, too? I don't
like you to talk as if I did all the giving and you all the taking. I
don't know how the girls and I would get along without your advice and
help here at the Hall. I think," her voice broke into a troubled laugh,
"I think you forget that the quality of friendship is not strained."

"Sidney," he said with sudden resolution, turning to face her bravely,
"I can't be just friends with you. You're so much the finest, so much
the best--" He left the sentence unfinished, and began again: "You have
a hundred men friends; you can't realize what you mean to me. You--but
you know what you are, and I'm the editor of a mortgaged country paper,
a man who has made a mess of things, who can't take care of his kid, or
himself, on his job without help--"

"Barry--" she began breathlessly, but he interrupted her.

"Listen to me," he said huskily, taking both her warm hands in his, "I
want to tell you something. Say that I WAS weak enough to forget all
that, your money and my poverty, your life and my life, everything that
puts you as far above me as the moon and stars; say that I could do
that--although I hope it's not true--even then--even then I'm not free,
Sidney. There is Hetty, you know; there is Billy's mother--"

There was a silence. Sidney slowly freed her hands, laid one upon her
heart as unconsciously as a hurt child, and the other upon his
shoulder. Her troubled eyes searched his face.

"Barry," she said with a little effort, "have I been mistaken in
thinking Billy's mother was dead?"

"Everyone thinks so," he answered with a quick rush of words that
showed how gre