“Say, Nan, what do you think?” asked Tom mysteriously. “Talk about melodramas and adventure stories! Life can give the best author cards and spades and beat him out on plots! Rodney Moore’s wife was sitting on a park bench, committing suicide, all by herself, when along came Cis and your brother. Cis saw the bottle, ran like a Marathon victor, jumped at her, knocked the bottle to smithereens, and then we took the lady to the Good Shepherd! She’s a wreck in every way a woman can wreck herself. How’s that? Rodney Moore’s ex-wife!”
Nan had dropped into a chair, her iron in her lap, and was staring at Tom with a horrified face.
“Tom, it can’t be!” she gasped. “That woman doesn’t live here.”
“Don’t know as to that, but she was certainly going to die here,” insisted Tom.
“What do you suppose it means? If she had taken the stuff that chap would have been free; not divorced, free. And Cis could have married him, if she pleased. Yet it was Cis hit the woman’s arm and saved her! What about it? What does it mean?”
“It must mean that the poor wretch is going to have a chance to repent and die decently some day,” said pious little Nan. “But Rodney Moore’s wife! And Cis saved her! What a story! Why, Tom, it makes me shake! Oh, I must go to Cis! I’ll take the baby up to her. He’ll comfort her.”
“No, no! Cis told me to ask you to let her alone awhile, till she pulls herself together,” Tom said. “Nan, the woman looked about all in. If she dies will Cis—?”
“I don’t know, I can’t tell,” cried Nan. “I hope not. Yet I see it would do everything for that man. It may be the way he’ll come right. We never can see ahead of the day. But, Tommy dear, don’t mind too much. I’m quite sure, whether it is Rodney Moore again or not, that it will never be you. I’m sorry, buddy, but that is true.”
“No need of your saying so,” growled Tom. “Cis said it herself, so plain that it doesn’t need footnotes for me to get it. All the same—” Tom stopped, turning away.
“Yes, I say so, too! All the same I’d hate it to be Rodney Moore. But maybe it is Cis’s work to save his soul,” said Nan, picking up her son, finding him an effectual restorative.