“Yes; open it, and read for yourself. Tell me how it strikes you.”
As Mrs. Harlow read, the colour rose in her face. “Tom wishes to retire from active business—yes, that’s what Kitty’s letter said. I should think he’d have to, when—O David, he says if you’ll take his place in the firm—he has long been thinking of such an arrangement—David!”
“Ah, don’t take my hand, dear!” He winced instinctively, but his tone was very gentle. “Foolish woman, stop kissing those bandages.”
“O David, now your worries will all be over at last! The children had been planning how they could help you. I wonder what it will seem like to be able to buy anything new once more. And perhaps we could take the Morris house!”
“That’s just what I had been thinking of. I was over there prowling round the place this morning. I thought we’d go down and look at it again together after dinner. And I’m glad for your sake, Min, that I’m not such a failure as it seemed, after all, dear. You won’t have to be ashamed of your husband. What’s that noise?”
There was the roll of drums and the sound of flying footsteps, mingled with Betty’s hysterical tones:
“O mother! O mother! Look out of the window! The procession is stopping outside!”
Like the Lady of Shalott, Mrs. Harlow made three paces through the room to look beyond her threshold. Before her dazed vision rose ranks and ranks of men, crowding the street before her doorway, with the flag in front.
Some one was waving the flag, and Herbert was speaking, and then there was a cheer, and another, and another, and yet another; but she was not standing by the window; her face was down by her husband’s.
“Oh,” she breathed, with a loving scorn in her choking voice, as she touched the bandaged hand that tried to seek hers, “I don’t need to have you climb up burning barns and rescue children, I don’t need to have you ‘successful,’ as they call it, to know who you are! If every one despised you, if you were so poor you had to—dig—wells, I’d still know you were the dearest, the bravest, the best, the most wonderful man in all the world! I’m just too proud of you to live!”