She smiled and pushed her chair back from the soft-coal blaze in the fireplace.
"Don't you know you are a perfect 'old man of the sea,' Tom?"
"That's all right; but tell me: is a bad promise better broken or kept?"
"I am sure I couldn't say without knowing the circumstances. Tell me all about it," and she resigned herself to listen.
"It was at daybreak this morning. I was alone with mother, looking at her lying there so still and helpless—dead, all but the little flicker of breath that seemed just about ready to go out. It came over me all of a sudden that I couldn't disappoint her, living or dead; that I'd have to go on and be what she has always wanted me to be. And I promised her."
"But she couldn't hear you?"
"No; it was before she came to herself. Nobody heard me but God; and I reckon He wasn't paying much attention to anything I said."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because—well, because it wasn't the kind of a promise that makes the angels glad. I said I'd go on and do it, if I had to be a hypocrite all the rest of my life."