Emily's grief at her father's death was deep, but placid, as grief for the aged must always be. She and Jerome lived on at the old house, though he often bemoaned the expense of keeping up so large an establishment, and discussed taking a smaller place. But they stayed on there, and the summer passed, quickly, as summers do in the intemperate zone, where winter in one form or another rages nine months in the year. And Emily tried to think of her husband in her old ideal of him, because she was soon to become a mother again. * * * * * It was late October and old Mrs. Garwood, who spent much of her time now with Emily, sat in the library with her. They had a fire in the grate, the first of the season, and it cheered the somber room. Outside the rain fell, and the wet leaves fluttering down from the trees in the yard, brushed the window panes before settling into the damp masses that choked the walks and the gutters. They had sat a long time in the bliss of silent companionship, these two women, who, though of such a different training and tradition, understood each other very well. They had been talking of housekeeping and the increased expense of living. Old Mrs. Garwood had sighed. "I wouldn't mind nothing," she said, "if my mortgage was only--" "If your mortgage--?" Emily let the garment in her fingers fall with her hands into her lap, and looked up with the question written large in her wide eyes. "Yes, it's due, an' Mr. Dawson's pressin' me. Tschk, tschk, tschk! I don't know, unless Jerome--but I don't like to bother him, poor boy." "I thought--" but Emily checked herself. She took up the little dress she had been working on. John Ethan, who had been writhing restlessly at her feet, looked suddenly into his mother's face, and something there silenced him, so that he was very quiet. The next morning, after breakfast, she and Jerome were alone. "Jerome," Emily said in the voice that made him lay down his paper, and look up with serious eyes, "Jerome, I thought you were going to pay off mother's mortgage for her." "You did?" "Yes." "Why so?" "Why, you said so, at the time, you remember." "At what time?" "Well, when you got your thousand dollars from--" "Oh, am I never to hear the last of that thousand dollars!" Garwood exclaimed, dashing his paper to the floor. "Must I always have that thrown up to me! I wish I'd never seen it!" "It isn't that, Jerome, you told me you had paid mother's mortgage with it, that's all." Garwood looked at her angrily a moment. "You're mistaken there, I reckon, you must be mistaken. I said, perhaps, that I would pay it off with that, but not that I had. I did intend to, but I had to use the money in another place. I--" But he could proceed no further then. He was thinking of the big poker game in the Leland the night the state central committee met at Springfield.