Johnny's grandfather, looking into her sweet, blue eyes, suddenly said—and with no thought whatever of Johnny—"I wish I was twenty years younger!" The wistful genuineness of that was the nearest he came to asking her to marry him. He went home feeling, as he walked up to his great, empty house, very old and forlorn, and yet relieved that he had not offered an affront to Miss Lydia nor, incidentally, made a fool of himself. Then he thought with the old, hot anger, of Carl Robertson, and with a dreary impatience of his daughter; it was their doing that he couldn't own his own grandson! "Well, the boy shall have his grandfather's money," he said to himself, stumbling a little as he went up the flight of granite steps to his front door. "Every bit of it! I don't care whether people think things or not. Damn 'em, let them think! What difference does it make? Robertson can go to hell." He was so dulled that, for the moment, he forgot that if Robertson went to hell Mary would have to go, too. Later that night his tired mind cleared, and he knew it wouldn't do to let Johnny have his "grandfather's" money, and that even Mr. Smith's money must be bestowed with caution.
"I'll leave a bequest that won't compromise Mary, but she and Robertson must somehow do the rest. I'll send for her next week and tell her what to do; and then I'll fix up a codicil."
But next week he said next week; and after that he thought, listlessly, that he wasn't equal to seeing her. "She's fond of Robertson—I can't stand that! I never forgive."
So he didn't send for his daughter. But a week later William King did. . . .
"I suppose I've got to go?" Mary told her husband, looking up from the doctor's telegram with scared eyes.
"It wouldn't be decent not to," he said.
"But he is right there, by the gate! I might see him. Oh—I don't dare!"
"Women are queer," Johnny's father ruminated. "I should think you'd like to see him. I guess all this mother-love talk is a fairy tale"; then, before she could retort, he put his arms around her. "I didn't mean it, dear! Forgive me. Only, Mary, I get to thinking about him, and I feel as if I'd like to see the little beggar!"
"But how can I 'love' him?" she defended herself, in a smothered voice; "I don't know him."
"Stop and speak to him while you're at your father's," he urged; "and then you will know him."