Chapter Seventeen.
Mrs Gaff endeavours fruitlessly to understand the Nature of Cash, Principal, and Interest.
At first, as I have said, poor Mrs Gaff was quite inconsolable at the bereavements she had sustained in the loss of her husband and son and brother. For a long time she refused to be comforted, or to allow her spirit to be soothed by the visits, (the “angel visits” as she styled them), of Lizzie Gordon, and the entrance of God’s Word into her heart.
Much of the violence of the good woman’s character was the result of training and example on an impulsive and sanguine, yet kindly spirit. She had loved Stephen and Billy with a true and ardent love, and she could not forgive herself for what she styled her “cruelty to the dear boy.” Neither could she prevail on herself to enjoy or touch a single penny of the money which ought, she said, to have been her husband’s.
Night after night would Mrs Gaff sit down by the cottage fireside to rest after her day of hard toll, and, making Tottie sit down on a stool at her feet, would take her head into her lap, and stroke the hair and the soft cheek gently with her big rough hand, while she discoursed of the good qualities of Stephen, and the bravery of her darling boy, to whom she had been such a cruel monster in days gone by.
Poor Tottie, being of a sympathetic nature, would pat her mother’s knee and weep. One evening while they were sitting thus she suddenly seemed to be struck with a new idea.
“Maybe, mother,” said she, “Daddy an’ Billy will come back. We’ve never hearn that they’s been drownded.”
“Tottie,” replied Mrs Gaff earnestly, “I’ve thoughten o’ that afore now.”
Little more was said, but from that night Mrs Gaff changed her manner and her practice. She set herself earnestly and doggedly to prepare for the return of her husband and child!