“Is that so?” Amos murmured, politely. “Well, it’s the first time I have had that pleasure with a lady.” He was conscious that he was pleasing her, and that she was smiling about her, for all the world (he said to himself) as if she were exchanging glances with some one. A new idea came to him, and he looked at her compassionately while he ate his cake, breaking off bits and eating it delicately, exactly as she ate.
She offered him no explanation for the wineglasses or for the conversation that he had overheard. He did not hear a sound of any other life in the house than their own. The doors were open, and he could see into the bedroom on one side and into the kitchen on the other. She had lighted another lamp, enabling him to distinguish every object in the kitchen. There was not a carpet in the house, and it seemed impossible that any one could be concealed so quickly without making a sound.
Amos shook his head solemnly. “Poor lady!” said he.
But she, now her mysterious fright was passed, had rallied her spirits. Of her own motion she introduced the subject of his errand. “You spoke of a debtor; what’s the man’s name?”
Amos gave her the truth of the tale, and with some humor described the twins.
“Well, I reckon he has more than paid it,” she said at the end. “What do you want? Were you going to lend him the money?”
“Well, only the interest money; he’s a good fellow, and he has nine children.”
“Who have to be paid for in advance?” She actually tittered a feeble, surprised little laugh, as she rose up and stepped (on her toes, in the prim manner once taught young gentlewomen) across the room to the desk. She came back with a red-lined paper in her meagre, blue-veined hand. She handed the paper to Amos. “That is a present to you.”
“Not the whole note?”
“Yes, sir. Because you asked me. You tell Foley that. And if he’s got a dog or a cat or a horse, you tell him to be good to it.”