The man bowed his head and sat staring into the fire.
“I reckon what you say is right,” he admitted.
Azalea had placed a heaping plate of food before him. She made hot coffee and urged him to drink it. And she found a pouch of tobacco and forced that on him. His clothes had dried before the hearty fire, and when he had lighted his pipe he began to feel master of himself again.
“I think, dad,” said Sam, “that the best thing for you to do is to get out of here to-night before you’re seen. I’ve some heavy new boots that you can wear and you can have my raincoat and sou’wester. That’s my advice—hit the trail to-night and get so far out of the way that none of your old neighbors will meet you. Settle in some live town over the mountain; put mother in a nice, light, little house—and whatever you do, don’t have green shades to the windows—and maybe she’ll get well again.”
“She’s better now,” said Mr. Disbrow. “Fifty percent better. But of course she looks with contempt on me. I don’t know whether she’ll let me go back to her or not, Sam.”
“Mother!” cried Sam. “Of course she will! You go back and don’t take no for an answer. You-all just hike over the mountain to a new place and get a new start all ’round. And one of the first things is to get Hannah’s eyes straightened. She can’t enjoy herself the way she is. It just spoils her life.”
“Yes, it does, Mr. Disbrow,” put in Azalea. “It makes her so shy that it’s terrible for her. Do say you’ll have her eyes made right.”
Disbrow looked up at Azalea with something almost like a smile. She was bending forward pleading with him, her own odd, intense look on her face. She did indeed seem to have a way of understanding the troubles of people.
“I’ll do it, miss,” he said, “and I’ll tell Hannah you-all told me to.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, then Mr. Disbrow turned his eyes on Sam and a deep flush spread over his face.