“‘Yes,’ I says, not looking up, ‘Harry, just as he looked that morning in Louisville—only he was troubled.’
“Then I turned on her like I was makin’ a clean breast of it. I had the tears startin’ and the right choke-up, an’ it wasn’t all jury dope. I didn’t want that heavenly angel fouled over by little Westridge. It balled the heart out of me.
“‘Now, Missie,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to help me even this thing up. I don’t know nothin’ about your affairs—I don’t want to know. But you’ve got to take that same bunch of money and chance it on something.’
“She shook her head, and I had a bad hour. All along that sea-path, with the fog dodging in and out, I kept right at her; I never lost a step. I was old and rich; money was nothin’ to me. I didn’t have a soul in the world. I couldn’t take it with me, an’ I couldn’t face ‘Harry’ with the debt hanging over—‘Have a heart! have a heart!’ That was my line of dope. I was pleading for myself—an’ it was the only line that ever would have got her.
“‘But what should I do with the money?’ she said finally, in a sort of queer hesitation.
“‘I’ll tell you that to-night,’ I answered.”
The huge creature seemed to relax, as though there had been a vital tension in the mere memory of the thing.
“That cleaned up my end of it,” he continued, “and after dinner when it was getting a little dark, I limped over to the church. I had the last copy of the Financial Register in my hand. I stopped in the door. The church was closed and it was dark, but I didn’t need any light for the business I come on.
“‘Governor,’ I says, ‘the rest of this job’s up to you. I’m a-goin’ to open this magazine here in the dark and the first thing that’s advertised at the top of the page on the right-hand side is the thing I’m a-goin’ to tell her to put the coin on—Ready,’ I says, ‘go to it!’ and I folded back the page and went over to the hotel.”
Again he paused.