She smiled broadly. "Through the lawyers I have already a binding option on it. The final papers will be signed to-day." "But how can I help you?" Joel asked, still shrinkingly. Mrs. Trott hesitated, as if to decide exactly how she should make her next move. Then, with a half-fearful smile, she said: "You remember, Joel, how you pleaded with me, just after you and Tilly were married, to come live with you and her?" "Yes, for we wanted you--we've always wanted you to be closer to us." "Well, I want to go to you now, Joel," was the slow reply. "I'm lonely. Another change seems to have come over me. I have learned to love the children so much that I am restless without them. Their little visits seem too short, and on rainy days and in the winter they can't come. Yes, I want to be with you all, and I am asking you to take me at last, Joel." "Asking me--asking me?" he stammered, comprehending her trend in part. "Why, you know--you ought to know that I--that we--" "Well, it is for you to take me or refuse me," Mrs. Trott put in, with a wistful smile. "I want to live on the farm. I can't manage it by myself and I want you to take charge of it for me--and let us all live in that big, fine house together." "But I-- Why, I--" Joel broke down again, his patrician face awry from sheer torture, and then sat twisting his gaunt hands over his ragged, quivering knee. "I see, it is good and kind of you, but--but-- I don't see how I, myself, could possibly accept your offer." "You have to, Joel," she retorted, still with her motherly smile. "You can't refuse a thing that will give me and your wife and children so much happiness." "But I'd be on--on your son's bounty," Joel flashed from the very embers of his humiliation. "Absurd!" exclaimed Mrs. Trott. "He says he owes you more than he ever could repay. He says you cared for me when he deserted me, and that you played the part of a man while he was a coward. But that is neither here nor there. Joel, I have willed all my new possessions to you and your wife and children. When I'm dead and gone you will have to have them, anyway, so why not make me happy the remainder of my life?" He was unable to formulate a logical reply, but beneath the revelation she had made he sat limp and bruised as a flower drenched and beaten by abnormal rain and wind. "Does Tilly know all this?" he asked, timidly, a cowed expression in his dull eyes. "Yes, Joel, and she wants you to accept my plan. She will be happy when you do, for your sake and for the sake of the children." He got up. His tanned face above his clean but frayed collar looked like the mask of some Indian chieftain thwarted in his last patriotic hope. His poor, underfed horse, in reaching for the grass near his bitted mouth, had drawn the reins beneath his hoofs and was about to break them. "Excuse me," Joel said, and he went to the animal and tied up the reins. He came back. His face was still rigid, his lips were quivering.