There is a click at the door-latch. The patient starts. Corkey looks out into the store.
"Here she is!" whispers Corkey, smoothing the coverlet. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Lockwin? Just step in here. Mr. Chalmers is not able to sit up."
"I heard he was hurt," says Esther. "Poor man! I owe him so much!"
It is perhaps well that David Lockwin has had no warning of this supreme event. It seems to him like the last day. It is the Second Coming. A hundred little wounds set up their stings, for which the husband is ever thankful. He can hear her out there in the store. He can feel her presence. She appears at his door! She stands at the foot of his couch! She, the ineffable!
"Oh!" she exclaims, not expecting to see a man so badly wounded, so highly bandaged.
"Nothing at all serious, Mrs. Lockwin," explains Corkey.
"Oh, I am so very sorry," says the lady. "Mr. Chalmers, you find me unable to express my feelings. I cannot tell you how many things I should like to explain, and how seriously I am embarrassed by the evils I have brought on you. I dare say only that I am a person of large means, and am sensible that I cannot repay you. I owe my life to your noble act. If I can ever be of service to you, please to command me. I shall certainly testify my regard for you in some proper way, but it afflicts me to feel that you are so much worse hurt than I was by the runaway. I lost a noble husband. If he had been alive you would not have been left unthanked and unserved for so long a time."
It distresses Corkey.
"That's what he was--a white man!"
David Lockwin is dumb. But he thinks he is saying: "I am David Lockwin! I am David Lockwin!"