“Have you saddle bags on your horse, Mr. Disbrow?” Annie Laurie asked.
“I reckon,” said Disbrow dryly, ashamed to test her generosity further.
“Then drive up to the storehouse door and we’ll be out with a lantern. I’ve enough food to feed a little army and you-all mustn’t go hungry while that’s the case.”
He avoided her look as he thanked her. Was she going to remember her offer to him of a thousand dollars? She surely was.
“Azalea,” she said, “count out the money I promised Mr. Disbrow.”
Azalea turned to the table where the fascinating rolls lay. There was indeed, much of it. Most of the bills were of the hundred dollar denomination. None of the children had seen anything like it—it was like looking into Aladdin’s cave to stand there beside that old table with rolls of bank notes. Perhaps each one of the young persons wished that it had been in gold instead of paper money, but even as it was it thrilled them. Azalea’s fingers trembled, as slowly and accurately she counted out the ten one hundred-dollar bills and handed them to Annie Laurie, who in turn gave them to Mr. Disbrow. He would have liked, in the shamed soul of him, to make some sort of a joke of it, but he could not and the cheap words he tried to speak died on his lips.
“Thank you—thank you,” was all he said.
“It’s not because you brought back my money,” Annie Laurie added, with something of the stern accent of her Aunt Adnah; “it’s because you’re an old neighbor, as I said, and because I’ve known you ever since I was a little girl and I have seen that things were hard for you. Most of all, it’s because Sam would like me to do it. That’s so, isn’t it, Sam; you like me to do it?”
“Oh, Annie Laurie,” Sam cried, choking, “I like you to do it.”
He lifted the old coat from the chair and helped his father into it, but it was soaking wet and he flung it down again.