“She broke down when talking about Shank to-day, and I declare she looked quite beautiful! Evidently Shank’s condition weighs heavily on her mind.”
“Can you wonder, Charlie?”
“Of course not. It’s natural, and I quite sympathised with her when she exclaimed, ‘If I were only a man I would go to him myself.’”
“That’s natural too, my son. I have no doubt she would, poor dear girl, if she were only a man.”
“Do you know, mother, I’ve not been able to get that speech out of my head all this afternoon. ‘If I were a man—if I were a man,’ keeps ringing in my ears like the chorus of an old song, and then—”
“Well, Charlie, what then?” asked Mrs Brooke, with a puzzled glance.
“Why, then, somehow the chorus has changed in my brain and it runs— ‘I am a man! I am a man!’”
“Well?” asked the mother, with an anxious look.
“Well—that being so, I have made up my mind that I will go out to Traitor’s Trap and carry the money to Shank, and look after him myself. That is, if you will let me.”
“O Charlie! how can you talk of it?” said Mrs Brooke, with a distressed look. “I have scarcely had time to realise the fact that you have come home, and to thank God for it, when you begin to talk of leaving me again—perhaps for years, as before.”