"You must go in and break it to her," George Haygarth said, as they climbed the stairs of the humble tenement house, the third story of which the mother and daughter occupied. "I will stay outside and wait. It won't be coming home at all if Martha doesn't bid me welcome."
Olive went in, trembling.
"Here is the money, mother."
Mrs. Haygarth reached out her hand for it and looked at it.
"Yes, it's all right; but I thought you were never coming home. What kept you?"
"I looked into the windows a good deal as I went down, and then I had to wait at the store, and I've been thinking, mother. It will be five years next week since father went away. What if we could see him again?"
She paused, expecting to hear some of the old bitter words about her father; but, instead, her mother's voice fell softly upon her ear.
"I've been thinking too, Olive, and I believe he is dead. I don't think I used to be patient enough with him, and perhaps I wore his love out. But he did care for you, and seems to me nothing short of death could have kept him away so long."
"But if you could see him, mother?" Olive persisted, with trembling voice.