How could he, poor boy?
Later on still--just as Dicky had been told--apropos of another youngster who
had "made a fool of himself," as the saying is--that matrimony would not only
ruin his further chances of advancement, but would lose him his present
appointment--came the news that the baby, his own little, little son, had died,
and, behind this, forty lines of an angry woman's scrawl, saying that death
might have been averted if certain things, all costing money, had been done, or
if the mother and the baby had been with Dicky. The letter struck at Dicky's
naked heart; but, not being officially entitled to a baby, he could show no
sign of trouble.
How Dicky won through the next four months, and what hope he kept alight to
force him into his work, no one dare say. He pounded on, the seven-hundred-
rupee passage as far away as ever, and his style of living unchanged, except
when he launched into a new filter.
There was the strain of his office-work, and the strain of his remittances, and
the knowledge of his boy's death, which touched the boy more, perhaps, than it
would have touched a man; and, beyond all, the enduring strain of his daily
life. Gray-headed seniors, who approved of his thrift and his fashion of
denying himself everything pleasant, reminded him of the old saw that says:
"If a youth would be distinguished in his art, art, art,
He must keep the girls away from his heart, heart, heart.
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