“Then I’ll take care of you, Mother!” Tom exclaimed. “Once I graduate, I’ll be earning enough to make life easier for you. There won’t be a needle or a spool of thread in the house.”
“What about mending for you?” she asked, smiling.
“Oh, I’m a pretty fair sewer myself,” he laughed. “But, Mother,” he asked, as they were on their way to the little cottage, “what was it you mentioned in your letter, about something important to tell me?”
Tom looked searchingly at his mother as they walked up the main street of the town. Nothing had changed much, Tom thought, during his two years’ absence. Here and there a new front had been put on to some store, and there were two new moving picture places. But otherwise Chester was about the same.
“What is it, Mother?” Tom asked again, as he noted that she hesitated about answering. “Is it the old problem—money—father’s affairs?”
“Yes, Tom, in a way. You know how the valuable land, now used as an approach to the railroad bridge, passed away from us. I have always thought that there was something wrong about that. I had an idea that it was, in some way, secured against anything that could happen.”
“What do you mean by ‘secured’?”
“I mean I understood your father to say, shortly before he died so suddenly, that if anything happened to him, that land would yield enough of an income for you and me to live on until you were old enough to look after yourself, and me, too. He always had an idea that it would be very valuable, though whether or not he had an intimation that the railroad was coming through I can not say.”
“You say he told you the land was secured?” asked Tom.
“That was the word he used—yes.”