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.”