CHAPTER IXDick Smalley had “fallen” for Ariel, fallen hard. Her tender care and gentleness for Stubby would have done it even if she had not been so lovely herself. But Ariel was lovely as a spring morning and her frank sunny smile had won him at first sight.
They became comrades over Stubby’s invalid couch, and by the second week of the girl’s stay in the house d**k was her avowed protector and admirer. He stole flowers from the station garden to present to her, he brought home magazines from the newsstand for her, he went out in the fields and gathered berries for her supper when she came home tired at night, and he hung upon her every glance with averted gaze, and would have gone to the ends of the earth at a single word from her.
She in her turn enjoyed the friendship as much as he d
