"'Oh, I don't know what he'd do, but I know he'd do something. He's that kind of a man.'"
When the first days of the spring bass-fishing came, the Doctor coaxed Dan away for a three days trip to the river, beyond Gordon's Mills, where the roaring trout-brook enters the larger stream.
It was well on toward noon the morning that Dan and the Doctor left, that Miss Farwell found Deborah in tears, with Denny trying vainly to comfort her.
"Come, come, mother, don't be takin' on so. It'll be all right somehow," Denny was saying as the nurse paused on the threshold of the little kitchen, and the crippled lad's voice was broken, though he strove so bravely to make it strong.
The widow in her low chair, her face buried in her apron, swayed back and forth in an agony of grief, her strong form shaking with sobs. Denny looked at the young woman appealingly as—with his one good hand on his mother's shoulder—he said again, "Come, mother, look up; it's Miss Hope that's come to see you. Don't, don't mother dear. We'll make it all right—sure we will though; we've got to!"
Miss Farwell went to Denny's side and together they managed, after a little, to calm the good woman.
"It's a shame it is for me to be a-goin' on so, Miss Hope, but I—but
I—" She nearly broke down again.
"Won't you tell me the trouble, Mrs. Mulhall?" urged the nurse. "Perhaps
I can help you."
"Indade, dear heart, don't I know you've trouble enough of your own, without your loadin' up with Denny's an' mine beside? Ain't I seen how you been put to it the past months to make both ends meet for you an' Gracie, poor child; an' you all the time fightin' to look cheerful an' bright, so as to keep her heartened up? Many's the time, Miss Hope, I've seen the look on your own sweet face, when you thought nobody'd be noticin', an' every night Denny an' me's prayed the blessed Virgin to soften the hearts of the people in this danged town. Oh, I know! I know! But it does look like God had clean forgotten us altogether. I can't help believin' it would be different somehow if only we could go to mass somewhere like decent Christians ought."
"But you and Denny have helped me more than I can ever tell you, dear friend, and now you must let me help you, don't you see?"