“Well, now, don’t be so very sure that I can’t help a little; you haven’t tried me. I don’t really know anything about it, but I would be willing to make a big guess that money is at the bottom of your present trouble; I think it is, about half the time, with men. Now, I want to say that I have a little of my own saved up, and I would like nothing better than to spend it in helping you out. If you will just tell me I am right, and how much you need just now, I’ll go at once and give you a chance to rest a while; you look as though you needed it.”
He was very pale and almost mortally tired; he had slept but little for the past two nights, and it had seemed to him but a few moments before that he could never smile again; yet a smile hovered over his face at thought of this dear old woman coming with her bits of savings that she probably had tucked away in some locked upper drawer, to help him out of trouble! It was a tender smile and warmed his heart; he had not known that she had any money at all, and one of his bitter sorrows had been that he could no longer do for her the little that he had been able to do. His grateful acknowledgment came promptly.
“It does my very soul good, Elsie, to feel how true is your sympathy, and how willingly you would help me; but I am only too glad if you have been able to save a little for yourself; hold every penny of it for your personal use; my money troubles are much too large to be helped by it.”
“Is it the mortgage, Joseph, that is pressing just now?”
He looked his surprise; he thought they had all been careful not to talk “mortgage” before her; still, what could it matter now? “Yes,” he said, “that is the climax. The mortgage on this house is overdue; it has recently come into the possession of a man who will not wait, for even a few days. But I could not do anything if he would; I have tried all the possibilities and have failed. Two years from now there will be a little money coming to me that, if I had it now, would save our home; but I can’t get it. The fact is the man wants the house, he would rather have it on the terms he can arrange than the money; it has doubled in value since I bought it, and the street has improved very greatly; it is worth his while to get hold of the property, and he knows it.”
“Well,” Aunt Elsie said briskly, “I should tell him he couldn’t have it; my advice is that you take the money to him to-morrow morning when you go to the store; if he is afraid of checks you might stop at the Metropolitan Exchange and get it for him in gold.”
Mr. Forman gazed at his sister with a dazed, half-frightened look. Had she suddenly become insane, or was this a miserable attempt at pleasantry?
“Just what do you mean?” he managed to get out, and she answered briskly:
“Just what I say; if you want this house, pay him the money you owe on it to-morrow morning; whether you want to keep it or not, I should think you would take up the mortgage and get rid of him.”
He rose up and came over to her, his pale face growing even paler yet with a new anxiety.