“Oh, Jim, no—don’t—you don’t understand. It’s not you—it’s Pusey.”
He stared at her in utter silence for a minute, his wife looking at him with tears in her eyes, and her son trying hard to swallow the lump that came into his throat when mother cried. The little girl looked up with big eyes; even the baby was still. At last Rankin spoke.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Willie heard it, down town, on his way home from school.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said doggedly.
“Oh, hones’, papa,” the boy protested, as if his veracity had been impugned, “cross my heart it’s true! It’s hangin’ up down town in front of the telegrapht office, an’ it’s in the paper, too. I heard ever’body talkin’ ’bout it, hope to die I did.”
Rankin stared at his son an instant, and then slowly turned his gaze on his wife. A look had come into his face which it grieved her to see, a look of utter, despairing anguish.
“Jim, you know you mistrusted something, you know you did. You’d never own up to it, but you know you did.”
Rankin’s lip quivered, and then, suddenly, he bent his elbows, put his arms on the table before him, and bowing his curly head upon their enormous muscles he burst into tears. His huge back heaved with his sobs, and his wife, hastening around to him, put her arms about his shoulders, laid her thin cheek to his curly hair, and then as her own tears rained fast, she said at last:
“Don’t, Jimmy, don’t; you’ll break my heart. I wouldn’t mind it—you can get somethin’ else.”