“I wish they were only half as grateful now,” he said, after a pause.
“Tom,” said Matty, eagerly, “who was that notary?”
“I thought of that, too,” said Tom. “There is no doubt who it was. It was old Gilbert; you must remember his sign, just below Faulkner’s on the avenue. But in the first place, Gilbert died just after our taking Richmond. In the second place, he never knew what the papers were—and he executed twenty such sets of papers every day, very likely. All he could say, at the very best, would be that at such a time father brought in an old Spaniard and two or three other greasers, and that he took their acknowledgments of something.”
“I do not know that, Tom,” said the girl, without flinching at his mannish information. “If notaries in Washington are anything like notaries in novels, that man kept a record or register of his work. If he was not very unlike everybody else who lives and works here, he left a very destitute widow when he died. Tom, I shall go after church and hunt up the Widow Gilbert. I shall ask her for her husband’s books, and shall tell her why I want them.”
The girl dropped her voice and said: “Tom, I shall ask her IN HIS NAME.”
“God grant it does any good, dear girl,” said he. “Far be it from me to say that you shall not try—”
But here he stopped speaking, for he felt Matty’s arm shake in his, and her whole frame trembled. Tom had only to keep his eyes before him to see why.
Mr. Greenhithe, Matty’s old admirer, the clerk who had been dismissed for stealing, was just entering the church, and even touched his hat to her as she went by.
Tom resisted his temptation to thrash him then and there. He said,—
“Matty, I believe I will tackle that man!”