"So am I. Tired, tired! I could not do without you. I have leaned on you far too long; we all have. Now, dear, lean on me for the rest of the way."
He bent his grizzled head upon hers and his eyes had the look of prayer that Priscilla once discovered.
"Dick—has not told me his real trouble," Helen faintly said. "I know it is somehow connected with a—nurse."
"The redheaded one," Ledyard put in; "a regular little marplot!" Then he gave that gruff laugh of his that Helen knew to be a signal of surrender.
"It's odd," he went on, "how one can admire and respect when often he disapproves. I disapprove of this—redheaded girl, but, if it will comfort you any, my child, I will tell you this: Dick's future, in her hands, would be founded on—on everlasting rock!"
"Perhaps—she won't have him!"
"Helen"—and Ledyard caught her to him—"you never would have said that if you had been Dick's mother!"
"Perhaps—not!"
"No. You and I have only played second fiddles, first and last; but second fiddles come in handy!"
The room grew dim and shadowy, and the two in the western window clung together.