“I think it would be better every way,” she ventured. She would never have dreamed of making the suggestion, knowing how hard and selfish the worldly heart had grown, missing the touch of those baby fingers.
Walter Forbush and Dan Harte! He coupled them now in his own mind. Was it a common weakness, and would the one ever sink as low as the other? Suppose his boys had lived—and been tempted? Even old Dan Harte was once somebody’s boy, fair and promising.
“Take the wine away,” he said to the waiter, at the same time picking up Maybee’s little pencil and writing his name in full under the simple promise.
“I knew there’d be a ‘door,’ somewhere! Mamma said God could make one,” said Maybee, joyously. “And to think you ’vited me your own self!”
VII.
THE “NEW SONG.”
“And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.”
“It’s coming up fast!”
“Work lively, boys! Do your best and you shan’t be sorry.”
How they raked—great, heaping winrows! How they tossed—huge fork-fulls, half covering the men on the loads! How they hurried the fat, lazy horses and slow, plodding oxen hither and thither across the fields!