“Listen, then,” Dick continued, mysteriously. “My mother hasn’t made up her mind that Mr. Nocker is hopeless. She really believes that in secret he has suffered a whole lot for his hardness to poor Amos.”
“Huh! I guess she’s about the only person in town then that believes so,” grumbled Leslie. “Everybody else thinks he’s got no heart at all, but a frozen turnip in its place. What makes your mother believe that, Dick?”
“Well,” said the other, “for one thing, she had occasion to go into his private office a week or so ago. She thought he called out ‘come in’ when she knocked, but when she opened the door Jed was standing there looking at a picture of poor Amos that he had on top of his rolltop desk; and he blew his nose a whole lot when he saw her. Mother says she felt sure his eyes looked watery.”
Leslie gave a mocking laugh at that.
“It never could have happened, Dick, believe me!” he exclaimed. “Chances were he only had a bad cold in the head; lots of it around town at this time of the year, and among older people especially. But you hinted at some sort of a plan that our folks had been making up.”
“My mother has a strong notion, which has become a positive conviction since seeing the fine little chap, that if Old Jed could become interested in Billy, not knowing that it was his own grandchild he was beginning to care for, he might in the end consent to accepting Tilly as his daughter, and provide for them.”
“H’m! sounds pretty nice, but knowing Mr. Nocker as well as I do I’m pretty shaky about the scheme working. But how could we go about it, Dick?”
“We’d have to get somebody interested who could afford to put a little money in the plan,” explained Dick, hesitatingly.
“How about my Uncle Henry?” demanded the other, instantly. “He’s just the one to plunge into anything of that kind, recklessly.”
“I’m sure he would be glad of the chance to help,” Dick went on to say, “after he had met Tilly and little Billy. And Leslie, you know the old saying, ‘speak of an angel and you’ll hear his wings?’ Well, there comes your uncle right now.”