The lawyer’s mouth hardened a little. He had heard the offer made in his office, and had suspected that Dan wanted to reserve a few hundred for immediate use.
“Better ask for a thousand,” he advised casually, “and would you like to put the money out on a mortgage?”
“I’d rather put it in the bank. I want it where it can be got at. That’s why I came about the
will. I want it used for the children while they need it, before they come of age. I want it used to send them to school. That could be arranged, couldn’t it?”
“I guess so. What about your executor?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. How do they generally do?”
“A woman generally makes her husband her executor, but if there is any reason why you would rather have someone else——.”
“Certainly not.” Mary had come into possession of her dignity with remarkable suddenness. A bright red covered her face, but her head was up, and the eyes that had wandered all over the room in nervous embarrassment before, met the lawyer’s squarely with something of a challenge. She even held them there in the face of his amusement while she finished a bit lamely: “But I think I would rather leave it with you to take care of for them, if you would—Dan has so much to look after.”
Mary didn’t notice the weariness of the way home that night. A strange, new elation carried her aching feet over the bruising, irregular railroad ties. The whole dismal swamp seemed singing with the joy of a breaker passed. Only, when the stars began to come out over the trees, she wondered if the children would be afraid to stay alone, and quickened her steps. Several times she slipped her hand into her bag just to
feel the copy of the will that was to be their safeguard if anything happened. Once she took out her bank-book and peered through the faint moonlight at the dancing figures. She had never had a bank-book before. She had never known what it was to take a ten-dollar bill from a pile, and spend it with luxurious recklessness in white flannelette and nainsook and shirting and various colored calicoes for the children. Then she would gather up the parcels in her aching arms and hurry on again with a thrill of happy anticipation.