Nancy's face flushed.
"I always want to be neighborly when there's sickness," she said; "'most anybody does. I hope you'll get on all right now. Good-by."
She held out her work-hardened hand, and the young man caught it in his warm, prosperous grasp. They looked into each other's eyes an instant, not the mortgagor and the mortgagee, but the woman and the man.
"Good-by, Mrs. Watson. I can never"—The words died huskily in his throat.
"Papa," called a weak, fretful little voice.
Nancy hitched her old cape about her high shoulders.
"Good-by," she repeated, and turned away.
Robert leaned across the kitchen table, and held a legal document near the lamp.
"It's marked 'Satisfaction of mortgage' on the outside," he said in a puzzled voice; "and it must be our mortgage, for it tells all about it inside; but it says"—he unfolded the paper, and read from it in his slow, husky whisper,—"'The debt—secured thereby—having been fully paid—satisfied—and discharged.' I don't see what it means."