Sam had been leaning forward on his elbows, his palms propping his chin. Now his face dropped into his hands, as he hid his haggard eyes from her clear, searching ones.
"How much, Sam?"
"All we got. The whole two-hundred-and-fifty."
For a moment Martha was dumb. Then, straightening back in her chair, taking up her sewing again, she said, "Well, at least we got it. There's that to be thankful for. An' doncher break your heart, Sam, worryin' about your bein' such a fool as sign that tool—I should say instrument. I done the same thing myself, now I come to think of it. The pot can't call the kettle black. I set my name to a paper, ol' lady Crewe ast me to, an' God only knows how much I'll be stung for it, for I don't.—But wouldn't it kinda discourage you from puttin' by for a rainy day, when the money you scrimped an' scringed to save, has to go for a umbrella to keep some other fella dry, which all you get, is the drippin's—right in the neck!"
CHAPTER XV
After many days of serious pondering Martha decided that the only way to relieve her mind was to "march straight up to the captain's office," and ask Madam Crewe point-blank, precisely what the liabilities would be, in the event of the paper she had signed, falling due, and failing to be met by the old lady herself.
"But if she said 'twas her will?" argued Sam. "You're all right if it was her will. You couldn't lose out on that, you know. Unless you were the kind that'd be looking for yourself. And, of course, if you sign one as witness, you're sure you can't be left anything in it."
"I don't want to be left anything in it. But, by the same token, I don't want to be left other ways, either. That's to say, I wouldn't want to have to cough up a couple o' hunderd now, just to oblige. Especially when I ain't got'm. Besides, it wasn't her told me 'twas a will. 'Twas the l'yer—which is quite another pair o' shoes. Anyhow, I'm goin' up there to find out what I'm libel for in case she can't pay, like Andy."
Sam saw there was nothing to do but stand aside and let her go.
The moment she entered the room, Martha realized that a change had taken place in "ol' lady Crewe." It was not anything she could "put her finger on," as she would have expressed it, but it was there unmistakably, to be felt, to be—feared.