That evening Paisley rather timidly approached a subject which he had tried twice before to broach, but his courage had failed him. “You said something, Mr. Wickliff, of paying me a little extra for what I do, keeping the books, etc. Would you mind telling me what it will be? I—I’d like to send a Christmas present to my mother.”
“That’s right,” said the sheriff, heartily. “I was thinking what would suit her. How’s a nice black dress, and a bill pinned to it to pay for making it up?”
“But I never—”
“You can pay me when you get out.”
“Do you think I’ll ever get out?” Paisley’s fine eyes were fixed on Wickliff as he spoke, with a sudden wistful eagerness. He had never alluded to his health before, yet it had steadily failed. Now he would not let Amos answer; he may have flinched from any confirmation of his own fears; he took the word hastily. “Anyhow, you’ll risk my turning out a bad investment. But you’ll do a damned kind action to my mother; and if I’m a rip, she’s a saint.”
“Sure,” said the sheriff. “Say, do you think she’d mind my sending her a hymn-book and a few flowers?”
Thus it came to pass that the tiny bakery window, one Christmas-day, showed such a crimson glory of roses as the village had never seen; and the widow Smith, bowing her shabby black bonnet on the pew rail, gave thanks and tears for a happy Christmas, and prayed for her son’s friend. She prayed for her son also, that he might “be kept good.” She felt that her prayer would be answered. God knows, perhaps it was.
That night before she went to bed she wrote to Edgar and to Amos. “I am writing to both my boys,” she said to Amos, “for I feel like you were my dear son too.”
When Amos answered this letter he did not consult the Manual. It was one day in January, early in the month, that he received the first bit of encouragement for his missionary work palpable enough to display to the scoffer Raker. Yet it was not a great thing either; only this: Paisley (already half an hour at work in the sheriff’s room) stopped, fished from his sleeve a piece of note-paper folded into the measure of a knife-blade, and offered it to the sheriff.