your old bugs and things,” and Nat laughed, incredulously.
“I want a butterfly net as much as you want a fiddle; why shouldn’t
I steal the money for it as much as you?” said Dan, still turning
away, and busily punching holes in the turf with his stick.
“I don’t think you would. You like to fight and knock folks round
sometimes, but you don’t lie, and I don’t believe you’d steal,” and
Nat shook his head decidedly.
“I’ve done both. I used to fib like fury; it’s too much trouble now;
and I stole things to eat out of gardens when I ran away from Page,
so you see I am a bad lot,” said Dan, speaking in the rough,
reckless way which he had been learning to drop lately.
“O Dan! don’t say it’s you! I’d rather have it any of the other boys,”
cried Nat, in such a distressed tone that Dan looked pleased, and
showed that he did, by turning round with a queer expression in his
face, though he only answered,
“I won’t say any thing about it. But don’t you fret, and we’ll pull
through somehow, see if we don’t.”
Something in his face and manner gave Nat a new idea; and he
said, pressing his hands together, in the eagerness of his appeal,
“I think you know who did it. If you do, beg him to tell, Dan. It’s so
hard to have ’em all hate me for nothing. I don’t think I can bear it
much longer. If I had any place to go to, I’d run away, though I love
Plumfield dearly; but I’m not brave and big like you, so I must stay
and wait till some one shows them that I haven’t lied.”
As he spoke, Nat looked so broken and despairing, that Dan could
not bear it, and, muttered huskily,
“You won’t wait long,” and he walked rapidly away, and was seen
no more for hours.
“What is the matter with Dan?” asked the boys of one another
several times during the Sunday that followed a week which
seemed as if it would never end. Dan was often moody, but that
day he was so sober and silent that no one could get any thing out
of him. When they walked he strayed away from the rest, and
came home late. He took no part in the evening conversation, but
sat in the shadow, so busy with his own thoughts that he scarcely
seemed to hear what was going on. When Mrs. Jo showed him an
unusually good report in the 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