"Lord, Marse Richard, sometimes a homesick chile will carry on this way for a month. Yes, sir, they will so."
The drops broke out on Richard's forehead.
"He won't be apt to have a return of it to-night, will he?"
"You can't never tell," said Mammy, cruelly. "He may have another spell inside of an hour. Ef he does I'll call you. Seems lak you can pacify him a heap better than what I can. Yes, sir."
CHAPTER XXV
THE MADONNA PICTURE
The master of Elmhurst returned to it the next night loaded down. He might have passed for a gentleman delivering his own groceries. In the toy store, with a shuddering recollection of what it was to be void of material from which to fashion a bribe, he had made purchases right and left. One would have thought that judiciously doled out they might be made to spread out over the month of weeping that Mammy Cely had darkly hinted at.
Philip had not waked when he left home that morning and there had been no opportunity to see how far a night in his new domicile had succeeded in reconciling him to it. Mr. De Jarnette had what he himself felt was an almost unreasonable anxiety about it. Before he came to live with him the personality of this child seemed a thing of no moment whatever. Now it assumed gigantic proportions. What if Philip did not like the things he had bought for him? What if he refused to be bought by them? He shuddered as he thought of last night and the possibility of its duplication.
Before leaving home that morning he had informed his housekeeper that he had shut up the town house for the present and would come out every night. Moreover, he had directed that Philip should have his dinner with him. That this was a sacrifice was certainly true, but it was one that his conscience demanded. Unsuspected in the depths of Richard De Jarnette's nature was an active volcano, never sending up fire and smoke that could be seen of men, but keeping up a low rumbling a good deal of the time. It was this that had brought him to live at his country home at a time when he specially desired to absent himself from it. It had issued the fiat that he must forego his quiet evening meal and make himself a martyr to a child's presence. He thought of it with anything but pleasure. But, so ominous was the rumbling within that though he could have avoided it all by a word, for the life of him he could not say the word. He had forcibly taken this child into his own life. He could not evade the responsibility that came with the act.
And yet Richard De Jarnette was considered a hard man.