Judge Rutherford was striding up and down the sitting-room, but it was Sheba who was deputed to tell the news.
She did it in a little scene which reminded him of her childhood. She drew him to a chair and sat down on his knee, clasping both slim, tender arms round his neck, tears suddenly rushing into her eyes.
“You and Rupert are rich men, Uncle Tom, darling,” she said. “The claim has passed. You are rich. You need never be troubled about mortgages again.”
He was conscious of a tremendous shock of relief. He folded her in his arms as if she had been a baby.
“Thank the Lord!” he said. “I didn’t know I should be so glad of it.”
CHAPTER XLI
The unobtrusive funeral cortége had turned the corner of Bank Street and disappeared from view almost an hour ago. In the front room of the house in which had lived the man just carried to his grave, the gentle old woman who had been his mother sat and looked with pathetic patience at Miss Amory Starkweather as the rough winds of the New England early spring rushed up the empty thoroughfare and whirled through the yet unleafed trees. Miss Amory had remained after the other people had gone away, and she was listening to the wind, too.
“We are both old women,” she had said. “We have both lived long enough to have passed through afternoons like this more than once before. Howsoever bad other hours may be, it seems to me that these are always the worst.”