Little boys! Were they bent on insulting him?
Jock descended with that laugh of his that always disturbed Billy's preconceived ideas. Then Billy was facing _Her_ as she bent to meet him halfway.
The glad smile passed slowly from Constance Drew's face. The others, below, were talking and forgetting the two upon the ladder.
"Did they let you come home for Christmas?"
Constance looked long at him, and at last the laugh was gone even from her dear eyes.
"Billy," she said softly, laying her hands on his shoulders, "you've been keeping your word to me, about swearing, and--and all the rest?"
"It's been hard, too, dear, I know; but it has made you into something--better." And then with a shining look on her face she bent and kissed him.
The heat rushed all over Billy's body, following a cold perspiration. His mouth twitched, and a maddening feeling of tears rose to his smarting eyes.
"I'm--going--over--to--Hillcrest school!" He whispered feebly, "I'm going--to get--learnin', an' things."
But such moments in life are brief. They are only permitted as propellers for all the other plain moments which are the common lot. Billy and Constance came down from the heights morally, spiritually and physically and joined the commonplace things below.
There was corn to pop, and candy to make. There were boxes to unpack, and goodies to eat; so was it any wonder that Joyce and her poor affairs should be relegated to a place outside this Eden?
Then, too, Jock complicated matters. He was shameless in his mirth and jokes. Even the stranger-lady with her wonderful aloofness could not daunt him, but Billy fiercely resented his attentions to the girl for whom he, Billy, had forsaken all else.
To leave the field to Jock was beyond the strength of mere man, so they stayed it out together, and left the bungalow in company just as the clock struck twelve.
It was then that the events of the past forty-eight hours began most to tell upon Billy. His exhausted nerves played him false, and cried out their desperate state.
As he and Jock left the warm, scented room behind them, and faced the white, still cold of an apparently dead St. Angé, the boy turned a drawn face upon Jock, and cried tremblingly, "Say, you better--keep--yer--hands--off!" Jock stood still, and returned Billy's agonized stare with one equally grim.