Mary Louise drew herself together in an odd little shiver. "Some strange things can happen by coincidence, Mrs. Mosby. Was he badly hurt?"
"Fractured his left leg just below the knee, Dr. Withers says—poor Joseph! He's been an ambitious boy. So anxious to get ahead, and so self-sufficient. I feel right guilty about Joseph." She shook her head dolorously.
"But there's no real danger, is there?" broke in Mary Louise, her heart momentarily sinking.
"No. I suppose not. He is terribly run down. Like a ghost he looked when they carried him in last night, his eyes staring out before him all dumb and suffering. He must have been in that ice-cold water almost an hour before they found him. I might have been doing things for him all this time—looking after him—but you know how things have been in this house."
The cold wall of her reserve seemed to be gradually letting down. Never before had she ever so much as alluded to the break in her family's fortunes. Mary Louise felt an odd, lifting feeling of hope—tremulous but dawning hope.
"Mrs. Mosby," she said. "Excuse me for speaking about something that is not my affair, but"—she hesitated and gazed at the polished marble slab of the hall tree—"it's only because I've known Joe so well, for such a long time"—the polished slab was gleaming faintly from an errant ray of sunshine that came through a dim, high-set hall window—"that I perhaps know a little more about him." She paused after this introduction, and having thus committed herself, plunged in. "Why don't you give Joe the chance he really wants? You have a lot of land here that is not being developed at all. Give Joe the chance to work it out—some of it, at least, on shares." She paused, breathless, and looked up timidly to see how her presumption fared.
A slow, fatuous smile spread over Mrs. Mosby's face. Mary Louise watched it break—watched it play for a moment about her lips like a shaft of winter sunshine. Then she spoke, shaking her head in reminiscence:
"I'd thought of that, myself. In fact, I'd spoken of it to Joseph. But he had other ideas. Many's the time I would have welcomed having someone who really cared, on whom I could depend. It's been a difficult time for me, my dear. Brother's so feeble. I couldn't call on him. No. Joseph doesn't care for farming. You're mistaken there. He's got an errant streak in him, like his father, I'm afraid." She sighed, and the sibilance of it echoed with a strange lingering note between those high gray walls. "Besides—though I've not let it be generally known—I've sold the place—to a Mr. Walcott of New York. He's very wealthy, I believe. He's taking it over the first of the year. I'm just not strong enough to hold on any longer."
Mary Louise did not look up. The sunlight on the marble slab of the hall tree faded slowly away.
"Don't you want to go up and see him, my dear?" Mrs. Mosby said at length.