“Ah, but, Orrin, we don’t either of us have to marry him,” said his wife. “I have just found out that it’s Kathleen’s happiness, not ours, that is at stake. What are you looking at?”
He had walked over to her dressing table, where there stood the faded photograph of a little child, with a vase of flowers near it. He gazed steadily at it without speaking.
“I always thought this better than the large portrait,” he said at last huskily. “You have not had it out in some time.”
“No,” she replied, “the frame wanted repairing, and the picture had grown so dim I—I couldn’t bear to see it, someway. But to-day—oh, Orrin, I have been so longing to have someone remember—”
“I have never forgotten,” he said; “did you think that? It is only that I am so busy, there are so many things that crowd upon me that I don’t get a chance to tell you. I gave a thousand dollars to the Children’s Hospital to-day for little Silvy’s sake—and our child’s. Why, Helen, Helen, Helen! Poor girl, poor girl, I’ll have to look after you more, I shall not allow you to go again to-night.”
“But it has done me more good than anything else in this world,” said his wife. “I’ve been one of the dead souls in prison. It’s not for sorrow that I’m crying, Orrin, not for sorrow alone—oh, for so much else, dear! And now I must go, and I think my man is downstairs for some work from you, and I’ll say good-by until to-morrow.”
When Helen reached her friend’s house she found the clergyman just descending the steps. It was beginning to snow again in the dusk, and he buttoned his overcoat tightly around his spare figure as he came forward to assist her from the sleigh.
“Mrs. Rhodes told me that she was expecting you,” he said.
“Then have you seen her?”
“Yes, for a few minutes.” He sighed and stood meditatively looking up the street. “Judge Shillaber has just been here. I was surprised to see him, he so seldom goes out, and never seemed to take any interest in his neighbors. But perhaps I should not say that,” he added hastily. “Everyone must feel the blow that has fallen here; the circumstances are so peculiarly sad. The ways of the Lord are very mysterious.” As he spoke he raised his face, which was thin and careworn because the sorrows of his people weighed very heavily upon him. “The ways of the Lord are very mysterious. We must have faith, Mrs. Armstrong, more faith.”