Alice slipped from the room and closed the door and Lucille, as if Alice's going had rendered unnecessary the giving of a reason, left her sentence unfinished. She was sitting in the dominie's desk chair with one braceleted arm resting on the desk, her hand on a sheet of sermon paper that lay there. She picked it up now.
“I couldn't help seeing this, Mr. Dean,” she said. “'Thusia was asleep when I came, and Alice brought me in here and left me when she went about her dinner-getting. I saw it without intending to.”
David colored. The paper contained a schedule of his debts, scribbled down that morning. He held out his hand.
“It was not meant to be seen,” he said. “I should have put it in the drawer.”
Lucille ignored the hand.
“It was because I saw it I waited,” she said. “This is what has been worrying you.”
“Worrying me?”
“Of course I have noticed it,” she said. “You have been so different the last month or two; I knew you had something on your mind, and I knew dear 'Thusia was no worse. You must not worry. You are too important; we all depend on you too much to have you worrying about such things. Please wait! I know how stingy the church is with you—yes, stingy is the word!—and Mr. Burton with no thought but to pay the church debt, whether you starve or not. These financier-trustees—”
“But the church is not stingy, Mrs. Hardcome—indeed it is not. I have been careless—”
“Nonsense! On your salary? With a sick wife and two children and all the expenses of a house? Well, you shall not worry about it any longer. I'll take care of this, Mr. Dean.”