“I am very glad that Mr. Colson is in the employ of a Christian gentleman. He is greatly in need of help from all Christian sources, and I am sure there is that in him which will respond to judicious effort.”
Then she let the bewildered man attend her to her carriage, and went her way rejoicing.
But there were plans being laid for her at that moment of which she knew nothing.
To-morrow she would go and see the golden-haired girl. In a neatly-packed basket she had certain things, among them a bonnet and a sack that she knew would fit the hair and face, and she believed would give Mart pleasure. If only she could contrive a natural way to give them to her, and there could be planned ways of keeping them safe from the pawnbroker's grasp. All this time she knew nothing of the fact that the hand which had grasped for years to furnish the pawnbroker was stilled forever. It had not once occurred to Dirk to tell her. It is a solemn fact that in this greater excitement he had actually forgotten it! As for the “Christian employer,” he did not know of it to tell. He had not so much as known whether black Dirk had a father or not. He was simply a street rough, whom Dr. Everett was trying experiments with; and because there was an unusual pressure on the office, and poor help was better than none, he was helping the experiment.
However, when Dirk went home from the office that night he remembered that the father was gone.
Mart met him at the door, a look of solemn determination on her face.
“Dirk,” she said, “she's going; as sure as you live, she's going. She's been bad all the afternoon. Sallie says that Mark's doctor will come to see her,—she knows he will, and Mark shall go for him as soon as he comes home; but I don't mean to wait for no doctor. I want her to come. She knows the way, and I want mother to be told it right, so there won't be no mistake. You go for her, Dirk, right off straight. There ain't any time to lose, for I tell you now she's going. She's been failing all along, you know, and she has just cried herself down. Dirk, will you go for her as fast as you can?”
The confusion of pronouns might have bewildered you. They did not Dirk. “Her” meant to him exactly what it did to Mart. He could not think how it could possibly mean any other person. But this was astounding news about his mother! It was one thing to have a father disappear, whom he had simply feared, until he had learned to hate; it was quite another thing to talk about the going away of the only one who had ever tried to mend his clothes, and who had sat up nights to wash them when she could.
He strode past Mart into the wretched room, and looked at the bed in the corner.