The deacon was speaking again now, and certainly no one in all Cliffwood had ever heard him utter such pleading phrases; for as a rule he had been apt to storm and complain.
“I have a large and comfortable house, madam,” he told Tilly; “and it has been very dark and gloomy for a long time now. Pity a lonely old man, please, and let a ray of sunshine come into my life. Allow me to offer you a home, just as long as you would care to stay; and the presence of little Billy would repay me a thousand fold. Say you will come, I beg of you, for my sake, for Billy’s sake!”
Of course, that was the widow’s chance; and bravely did she rise to the occasion.
“I thank you, sir, for your kind offer of hospitality,” she told him, “but I could never accept without explaining something that evidently you have never suspected. If I do come to your house, Mr. Nocker, it must be at your earnest request after I have told you that I am the widow of your son, and that this little darling I hold in my arms is Amos’ own boy, Billy!”
CHAPTER XX
THE DEACON SURRENDERS
When Mrs. Nocker said this, both the boys fastened their eyes on the old deacon, knowing what a severe shock the news must be to him. He stared hard at the young woman as though the staggering truth found some difficulty in penetrating his mind.
“Billy—you, his mother, belonging to my son Amos. I surely must be dreaming, girl! Why, that would give the child to me—his grandfather!”
Mr. Nocker jerked these fragments of sentences out as though trying hard to comprehend it all. His gaze wandered from the eager and pretty face of Tilly to the little fellow held in her arms.
“No, sir, Billy belongs to me, and nothing can separate him from his own mother,” she told him plainly. “Where I go he goes too; where Amos’ wife is not welcome, Billy can never find a home, sir. That would be as Amos must have wished if he had lived.”
The deacon saw the point. He knew that he had been worsted in the game, and perhaps, to tell the truth, the old man was not sorry, because he had been engaged in a losing fight for a long while, struggling against his better nature.