“I’ll take them to her myself,” said Barry promptly.
Page turned to him with a smile.
“Hunting for a repetition of that experience with the Widow McAndrew, are you?” he asked.
Barry’s experience with the Widow McAndrew was one of the standing jokes among the office force of the company.
“Don’t mention it,” said Barry. “It gives me a chill now to think of it. You know I’m rather fastidious, Page, rather fastidious. And the woman wasn’t what you might call personally neat, and she’d been crying, and her hair wasn’t combed, and she certainly weighed not less than two hundred—no discoverable waist-line, you know; and when I saw her bearing down on me——”
The two men passed out of the room and closed the door behind them, Barry continuing with the relation of his oft-repeated story of the Widow McAndrew’s gratitude.
In the meantime the president of the company had plunged again into the work on his desk. But when the door closed on Barry and Page he looked up, laid down his pen, rose and walked over to one of the windows and stood for many minutes looking out into the plaza on which his factory buildings fronted, and up the narrow street that led toward the heart of the city.
CHAPTER III
IN THE PRESENCE OF DEATH
It was not until the afternoon of the day that he met Westgate on the street that the Reverend Mr. Farrar was able to go to Factory Hill. It was a suburban residence district, tenanted mostly by day-laborers and their families. It lay about two miles from the center of the city, on an elevated plateau overlooking the plant of the Malleson Manufacturing Company. The houses in the neighborhood were all small and unpretentious, and some of them were shabby and ill-kept. But the house that Mary Bradley occupied, small as it was, gave evidence of being well cared for by its tenant. The rector had no difficulty in finding it. Every one about there knew where Mrs. Bradley lived. He knocked at the crape-decorated door, and the mistress of the house, herself, opened it. When she saw who was standing there her face clouded. A visit from a clergyman was neither expected nor desired. But she felt that she could not afford to be remiss in hospitality, even to an unwelcome guest. So she invited him to come in. It was the living-room that he entered. From behind a closed door to the rear subdued sounds proceeded as though some one were working in the kitchen. Beyond another door, half opened, the rector caught a glimpse of a prone human body, covered over with a sheet. Otherwise Mary Bradley was alone. She made no pretense of being glad to see her visitor, but she set a chair for him, and waited until he should disclose his errand. And, now that he was here, he was at a loss to know just what he should say. He felt that this woman would resent any formal expression of sympathy, any meaningless platitudes, any pious attempt at consolation. So he compromised with his true errand by inquiring into the particulars of John Bradley’s death. There was not much for her to tell. He had failed, steadily, since the time of the trial. On the afternoon before, his heart had refused to perform its proper function, and all was soon over. She told it very briefly and concisely.