  That evening, while the sky was still pink and the water changing from blue to purple and then to gold, Florence went for a row alone. She wanted to think. The events of that day had stirred her to the very depths. She had not believed that there were such persons in the world as those three young people who had attempted to drive them from Tillie’s fishing hole. “Rich, that’s it,” she told herself. Yet, in the depths of her heart she knew that this was not all. “Tillie called them crooks, gamblers,” she told herself. “A professional gambler must have a cold heart. He takes money in an unfair way from men who have earned it and need it. How can one expect to find a warm heart in the breast of a gambler’s son?” As she asked herself this question, she rounded a small island that lay a little way out from the point upon which the palatial summer home of Erie, the millionaire, had been erected. She barely missed bumping into a canoe that lay motionless in the water. The canoe held a solitary occupant, a girl of sixteen. Instinctively Florence knew that this was the millionaire’s daughter, she who had lost the three priceless rubies in a gambling den. Instantly her heart warmed. The girl was beautiful. She was rich. Yet, on her face was a look of loneliness and sadness such as Florence had seldom seen on any face. “It’s not so much the disgrace of losing the rubies,” she told herself. “This girl is young. She is just launching out into life. She has found it strange and rather terrible. She doesn’t understand.” Her first impulse was to pause close beside the girl, to tell her that she had heard much about her; that she longed to aid her; that she and the lady cop would help her; that if she would but allow it they would explain life to her; that in the end they would restore the rubies to their proper place. “But she is rich,” thought Florence, with a quick intake of breath. “I am poor. Her family is in society. I will never be.” Ah, yes, “society,” that mysterious something to which people have given this name. She did not understand it. There was a barrier. She must not speak. So she passed on. And the twilight deepened into night. She was just turning the prow of her boat toward the lights of home when a speed boat came roaring by. Just as they were opposite her, the searchlight from a larger boat played for an instant on the faces of those in the speed boat. She recognized them instantly. “Green Eyes, Jensie Jameson, and that boy who sometimes rides in the ‘Spank Me Again’!” she exclaimed beneath her breath. “So she is truly here. Could it have been they who ran us down that night? “Green Eyes, perhaps. But not that boy. I’d trust him anywhere.” Yet, even as she thought this, she was tempted to question her judgment. “Surely,” she told herself, “I have placed every confidence in other persons, and in the end have found them unworthy. Why not this boy?” She rowed silently and rather sadly back to their little dock. Surely this was a puzzling world. Perhaps, after all, she understood it as little as the “poor little rich girl,” back there in the canoe. |
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