“But he doesn’t. It was himself that he was troubled about, to think that he had strayed from the strict path of duty to such an extent as to allow me—his son—to be blamed for that—Well, it’s all wrong, anyway, and mother’s got to come home.”
“How are we to set about it, Dick?”
“Dora, you’ll have to go and fetch her. I’ve thought it all out.”
“I? How can I? That wouldn’t do at all, Dick. Don’t you see that she would resent it—the advance coming from me, because I was one of those most concerned and affected by her sin; and, being a woman, more likely to be hard upon her than anyone else.”
“You mean that you nearly married Ormsby because she led you to think that I wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn. Well, perhaps I wasn’t—before the war. But I learned things out there. I had to pull myself together, and endure and go through such privation that a whole life on fifteen dollars a week 345 would be luxury in comparison. I’d go to mother at once, if I were strong enough, but I’m not. So, what do you suggest, little girl?”
“I think we ought to sound your father on the matter first. He is difficult to approach. He has a trick of making you feel that he prefers to bear his sorrow alone; but I think it can be managed, if we use a little harmless deception.”
“How?”
“Well, first of all, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get Jane to turn your mother’s room out, and clean it as if getting ready for the return of the mistress of the house.”
“I see,” cried Dick, with a spasmodic tightening of the right hand which rested on Dora’s shoulder. “Give father the impression that she’s coming back, just to see how he takes it.”
“Yes.”