Having hidden her three volumes under the bed, Jennie looked out and saw
him. He didn’t look specially dejected, yet she knew he was. She knew it
by the way he stared at the hydrangea bush, or by the fact that he had
renounced his search for another job so early in the afternoon. Like
herself, he seemed thrown on his own resources for company, finding
little or nothing there. She ran down to meet him. She would do that
rare thing in the Follett family, take him for a walk.
He turned with her obediently. It was a relief to him not to be obliged
to go in at once and tell Lizzie he had no good news. Lizzie was still
his great referee, as he was hers. The children were still the children,
not to be taken into confidence till there was nothing else to be done.
But this afternoon life, for the first time, looked different. It was as
if, unaided, he couldn’t carry the burden any more. There were younger
shoulders than his, and perhaps it was time now to call on them to share
the task.
"I’m an old man, Jennie," he said, as they began to move slowly toward
Palisade Walk. "I haven’t felt old till lately; but now—now I’m all in.
I don’t suppose I’ll ever get a chance to do a day’s work again."
When she rallied him on this, he told her the story of his day, omitting
the "old bum" incident. He must spare his children that, even if he
couldn’t have been spared himself.
This tale, delivered without emphasis, was more terrible to Jennie than
all the pangs of conscience. Had she but been true to the promises made
to Mrs. Collingham, she could have said, "Father dear, you’ll never have
to worry any more." Two hours earlier, twenty-five thousand dollars had
been within her grasp, and she had let it go. "All that money," she
sighed to herself, "_and love_!"
But since it would be within her grasp to-morrow, a new thought came to
her. The hundred dollars she would ultimately return to Bob need not be
in exactly the same bills. There was no reason why she should not use
this amount and restore it from the wealth to come. Bob couldn’t
possibly tell the difference between the paper that made up one sum of a
hundred dollars and the paper that made up another. She would have
preferred to hand it back without touching it, but, in view of the
family need, fastidiousness was out of place.
As they emerged into Palisade Walk and the vast panorama lay below them,
she slipped her arm through his.
"Daddy," she said, caressingly, "what should you say if you saw me with
a hundred dollars?"
To Josiah, it was the kind of question children ask when their
imaginations go off on flights. It would have been the same thing had
she said a thousand or a million. Nevertheless, he replied, more gravely
than she had expected:
"What should I say, my dear? I should say you couldn’t have come by it
honestly."
"Oh, but if I could?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account