“No,” she whispered, winking back her tears. “It has been a beautiful tribute–too beautiful for me. I was never worthy of it.”
“I am the better judge of that,” he murmured quietly.
For a time they were lost in the dreams of what might have been, when they were disturbed by the big booming laugh of Colonel Ryan.
“Hezekiah Wilkins,” exclaimed Mrs. Henderson with some sharpness, “we are a pair of sentimental old fools to dig up the past. We should save our strength for the future.”
“Implying that we might better be preparing to dig our own graves. Is that your idea?” he demanded.
Indignant eyes in which but little sentiment lingered, rested upon the lawyer. “I suppose that you wished to be amusing, Hezekiah, but for a man noted for his tact that was an inexcusably gruesome speech. We may be old, as you intimate,” she snapped, “but we have work to do before–we get busy on our own graves.” Her gaze traveled across the lawn and came to rest upon the girlish figure of Virginia standing beside the Colonel. Hennie’s mood softened, and when she spoke, it was as if she were thinking aloud. “If we have met sorrow and disillusionment in our own lives, Hezekiah, and with smiling lips have swallowed the bitter mouthful, should we not be willing to keep those whom we love from a similar experience?”
Hezekiah bowed in sober agreement.
“Virginia Dale is very happy this afternoon,” Mrs. Henderson went on, “because she is doing what her mother, Elinor, always loved to do–make others happy. It has never entered her head that her father is not generous and kind–that he is the mean and selfish man that you and I know.”
The widow reached over and laid her hand upon that of the lawyer. “I am going to tell you a story, Hezekiah. It is about those good old days when you and I used to dance and do other gay and frivolous things–before we laid ourselves on the shelf.” Her face saddened. “My story is mostly a guess,” she continued, “and it is about what I think happened to Elinor Dale in those long bedridden hours before she died.”
Again, he bowed and he was saddened, too, by the memories she recalled.