Back to Gibraltar Terrace now, the Squire fretting and fuming. He was hot and hasty, as the world knows, given to saying anything that came uppermost, justifiable or the contrary: but in this affair it did seem that something or somebody must be wrong.
“Johnny,” said the Squire, as the cab bowled along, waking up out of a brown study, “it seems to me that this is a serious matter of conscience. It was last Sunday evening, wasn’t it, that you read the chapter in St. Matthew which tells of the last judgment?”
“Tod read it, sir. I read the one that followed it.”
“Any way, it was one of you. In that chapter Christ charges us to relieve the poor if we would be saved—the hungry and thirsty, the sick, the naked. Now, see here, lad: if I give my alms to this new society that has sprung up, and never a stiver of it to relieve the distress that lies around me, would the blame, rest on me, I wonder? Should I have to answer for it?”
It was too complicated a question for me. But just then we drew up at Miss Kester’s door.
Mrs. Mapping had changed in that short time. I thought she was dying, thought so as I looked at her. There was a death-shade on the wan face, never seen but when the world is passing away. The Squire saw it also.
“Yes,” said Miss Kester, gravely, in answer to his whisper. “I fear it is the end.”
“Goodness bless me!” gasped the Squire. And he was for ordering in pretty nearly every known restorative the shops keep, from turtle-soup to calves’-foot jelly. Miss Kester shook her head.
“Too late, sir; too late. A month ago it would have saved her. Now, unless I am very much mistaken, the end is at hand.”
Well, he was in a way. If gold and silver could revive the dying, she’d have had it. He sent me out to buy a bottle of port wine, and got Miss Kester’s little apprentice to run for the nearest doctor.