'
Dick's wise sympathetic eyes looked into his, and the boy nodded gravely.
'You can swear I'll stick up fer her,' he said.
Dick, whilst feeling quite a profound sorrow for Christina Shine, derived
no little satisfaction from the position in which he found himself as the
champion of oppressed virtue and the leal friend of a devoted young
couple, the course of whose true love was running in devious ways. This
was a role he had frequently played in fancy; but it was ever so much
more gratifying in serious fact, and he took it up with romantic
earnestness, a youthful Don Quixote, heroic in the service of his
Dulcinea.
At dinner he favoured his mother with the latest news from the mine and
glowing opinions on its prospects; and Mrs. Haddon, more than ever
suggestive of roses and apples, beamed across the table upon her
wonderful son, perfectly happy in the belief that Frank Hardy would
presently be released, that their fortunes were practically made, and
that she was the mother of the most astonishing, the cleverest, the
bravest, and the handsomest lad that had ever lived. Dick's claims to
beauty were perhaps a little dubious, but it must be admitted that local
opinion, as expressed in local gossip a thousand times a day, went far to
justify Mrs. Haddon's judgment on all the above points.
Dick escaped immediately after dinner, and went straight to Shine's
house.
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