Two Boys and a Fortune Part 43

"He stayed with his father," replied Rex.

"His father!" echoed both girls. "Why, has he found him?"

"Yes," answered Roy, "Syd found him. There's a story for you, Mr.

Keeler, a regular romance."

Rex began to look nervous. He feared that his escapade with Harrington was about to be related. But Roy skillfully told the main points in Miles's career without encroaching on this.

Mr. Keeler stayed until ten o'clock, and while they were talking and laughing in the parlor, the twins were thinking of what was going on in the room above.

When they went to kiss their mother good night they saw that she knew.

The girls exclaimed at once at sight of her face.

"You are ill," cried Eva.

"No, Eva," rejoined Mrs. Pell, "it is worse than illness."

The tears welled up in her eyes. She could say no more.

Sydney was not with her, neither was he in his room. The girls were clamorous to know what was the matter.

"Tell them, Roy, I can't," Mrs. Pell at last found voice to say.

Rex could not stay to hear. And Roy never suffered as he did in the few moments it took him to relate his foster brother's crime. It seemed as though it were as cruel as to drive nails into the fair flesh of the young girls. And yet they must know.

"How could he do it, how could he?" Eva murmured again and again.

"Perhaps he didn't," Jess suddenly exclaimed. "He's nothing to show for it-- the second will, I mean. Perhaps there's something wrong with his brain, and he only imagines there was one and he destroyed it."

But Roy shook his head. There was Ann to prove, if necessary, that she had signed the other doc.u.ment.

For a long while they sat there. It seemed as if black despair had settled upon them and there was no way out.

For years Mrs. Pell had leaned upon Sydney. In an emergency like the present, he would be just the one to whom she would go for counsel.

And now-- he had failed her utterly.

"What did you say to him, mother?" asked Roy after a while. "Were-- were you kind to him?"

"I tried to be. I tried to remember that he had done all for our sakes, but I feel like a s.h.i.+p without a rudder."

Roy left his seat near Eva and slipped into a chair next his mother, who had bowed her head on the desk in front of her.

She had been writing a note to a charitable society of which she was a member. The check she was to send them lay all signed, ready to be inclosed.

"Moms," whispered Roy, using the pet name Rex had invented and pressing one of his mother's hands tightly in his, "you have us. We are growing fast. I am sure we shall get along."

"Bless you, my boy." His mother kissed him on the forehead, then lifted her eyes reverently, as she added: "Yes, and I must not forget that there is One who is always a friend to the needy. And now, children, we must go to bed. To-morrow we will decide what to do."

Roy stopped at Rex's door, went in and found his brother tossing in bed.

"Have you told the girls?" he asked.

"Yes."

"How did they take it?"

"Better than I expected they would."

"But what are we going to do, Roy?" Rex went on. "We can't stay here."

"No, of course not."

"But what will people say? Won't there be a terrible scandal?"

"You mustn't talk that way, Rex. Remember that you and I are the ones mother must depend on now. If she sees us looking on the dark side it'll make it so much the harder for her."

"That's it," returned Rex. "Life is something you must go ahead with.

You can't lay it down when you get tired. All right; I'll remember what you say, Roy, but it's an awful come down."

Rex, however, "came up to the scratch," as he himself would have expressed it, n.o.bly the next day.

n.o.body went to church, and about half past eleven the door bell rang and "Mr. Darley and son" were announced.

Miles, as we shall continue to call him, sent up word to know if he could come up to Rex's room.

"Do you know?" asked Reginald, as he met him in the doorway.

"Yes; Mr. Sydney came around to us this morning. I can't understand it. But I don't want you to feel--"

Miles hesitated. It was very embarra.s.sing for him to express just what he wanted to say. Rex helped him out.

"I'm awfully glad for you, old fellow," he said heartily. "And I don't want you to worry about us. We'll get along some way."

"But that won't do," Miles persisted. "If it hadn't been for you I might have been a common tramp now and never found my father."

"And if it hadn't been for you I would probably have been dead long ago," Rex retorted. "So you see we're quits."

"No, we're not, and I don't want that we should, till I give you what I think you ought to have. Father says I may and--"

"Miles Harding-- Darley, I mean, if you do that I'll-- I'll never speak to you again. There, take your choice-- quits or my friends.h.i.+p."

Rex's pride conquered. Miles was still his slave.

"I'll never say another word about it, Rex," he replied meekly, and for the first time Reginald felt that he could face poverty bravely.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

A FISTIC ENCOUNTER