"Don't disturb yourself at all about that," I replied. "I am getting six dollars a week, and that will pay our board."
"I cannot live on your hard earnings, Philip," he added, shaking his head. "I feel guilty even now; and I should not have come here to be a burden to you, if I had not been a wreck of what I was once."
"I assure you, father, it will be the greatest pleasure on earth for me to do what I can for you. I may not get a dollar a day all the time, but I have fifteen hundred dollars, sure, now."
"I hope I shall soon be able to do something for myself, Philip. For the last week I have dared to hope that your mother might come back, and that we might be as happy as we were before I dashed down all my earthly hopes."
"I hope so, father; nothing could make me so happy as to live with my father and mother."
"Perhaps I may get a situation as a clerk, and earn enough to support me; though it is hard, at my time of life, to go back and commence where I began twenty years ago. But I deserve all that can befall me, and I will be as humble as my circumstances are. God has been merciful to me; he has spared and redeemed me."
"Do you know where my mother is?" I asked, burning with the old desire to see and know her.
"I do not. They have taken pains to keep all knowledge of her from me. I was told that she was in Europe, and I have no doubt such is the case. I should like to let her know that our lost little one has been mercifully restored, but I cannot do even that; and I will not ask her to live with me again until I have made myself worthy to do so."
Somehow God always sends good angels to those who, in trust and faith, are trying to help themselves. The door bell rang, and Mrs. Greenough admitted Mr. Rockwood.
"I am glad to see you again, Phil," said he. "I wished to see your father, and I wanted to tell you to be at the police station to-morrow forenoon at ten o'clock."