Rising from her chair she stood before him with her vague, sweet smile playing about her lips.
"It is natural that you should feel depressed with that cough," she remarked, "I really wish you would let me send you a mustard plaster."
As the cough broke out again, he strangled it hilariously in a laugh. "Oh, well, if it's any comfort to you, I don't mind," he responded.
When she had gone he picked up Baxter's letter from the table and opened it with trembling fingers. What he had expected to find, he hardly knew, but as he read the words, written so laboriously in Baxter's big scrawling writing, he felt that his energy returned to him with the demand for action—for personal responsibility.
"I don't know whether or not you heard of Mrs. Brooke's death three months ago," the letter ran, "but this is to say that Mr. Beverly dropped down with a paralytic stroke last week; and now since he's dead and buried, the place is to be sold for debt and the children sent off to school to a friend of Miss Emily's where they can go cheap. Miss Emily has a good place now in the Tappahannock Bank, but she's going North before Christmas to some big boarding school where they teach riding. There are a lot of things to be settled about the sale, and I thought that, being convenient, you might take the trouble to run down for a day and help us with your advice, which is of the best always.
"Hoping that you are in good health, I am at present,
Baxter."
As he folded the letter a flush overspread his face. "I'll go," he said, with a new energy in his voice, "I'll go to-morrow."
Then turning in response to a knock, he opened the door and received the mustard plaster which Lydia had made.