Poor Mrs Timms, a delicate-looking woman, not yet forty, who had evidently been pretty once, lay on a miserable bed, apparently at the point of death.
Aileen glided quickly to the bed, sat down on it, and took the woman’s hand, while she bent over her and whispered:—
“Don’t be distressed. The rent is paid. He will disturb you no more. You shall be quiet now, and I will come to see you sometimes, if you’ll let me.”
The woman gazed at the girl with surprise, then, as she felt the gentle warm pressure of her hand a sudden rush of faith seemed to fill her soul. She drew Aileen towards her, and looked earnestly into her face.
“Come here, Timms,” said Mr Hazlit, abruptly, as he turned round and walked out of the closet, “I want to speak to you. I am no doctor, but depend upon it your wife will not die. There is a very small building—quite a hut I may say—near my house—ahem! Near my cottage close to the sea, which is at present to let. I advise you strongly to take that hut and start a green-grocery there. I’m not aware that there is one in the immediate neighbourhood, and there are many respectable families about whose custom you might doubtless count on; at all events, you would be sure of ours to begin with. The sea-air would do your wife a world of good, and the sea-beach would be an agreeable and extensive playground for your children.”
The green-grocer stood almost aghast! The energy with which Mr Hazlit poured out his words, and, as it seemed to Timms, the free and easy magnificence of his ideas were overpowering.
“W’y, sir, I ain’t got no money to do sitch a thing with,” he said at last, with a broad grin.
“Yes, you have,” said Mr Hazlit, again pulling out his purse and emptying its golden contents on the table in a little heap, from which he counted fifteen sovereigns. “My debt to you amounts, I believe, to twenty pounds; five I have just paid to your landlord, here is the balance. You needn’t mind a receipt. Send me the discharged account at your leisure, and think over what I have suggested. Aileen, my dear, we will go now.”
Aileen said good-night at once to the sick woman and followed her father as he went out, repeating—“Good-evening, Timms, think over my suggestion.”
They walked slowly home without speaking. Soon they reached the cottage by the sea. As they stood under the trellis-work porch the merchant turned round and gazed at the sun, which was just dipping into the horizon, flooding sea and sky with golden glory.