"I'm going to keep everything of Madeline's I can," she said, after some preliminary conversation. "Poor child, she was looking forward so to her coming-out party—but I guess that's all a thing of the past now," she sighed. "And everybody said you were going to be elected the town's first mayor, too. I was counting so much on that—but of course they won't do it now. But do you know, David, there's one bit of consolation left to us—and that's about Madeline. I think, I think, David, she'll be provided for, all right, before very long," smiling significantly as she made the prediction.
"How?" David asked, quite dumfoundered, yet not without a kind of chill sensation in the region of his heart.
"Oh, the old way," responded his wife; "the old, old way, David. I've seen signs of it, I think—at least I've seen signs that some one else wouldn't mind taking care of her, some one that would be able to give her quite as much as we ever did," she concluded, a note of decided optimism in the voice.
David sat up straight and gasped. "Surely," he began in a hoarse voice, "surely you ain't talkin' about—about matrimony, are you, mother?"
Madeline's mother smiled assentingly. "That's the old, old way, David—I guess that's what it'll end in, if things go on all right. Don't look so stormy, David—I should think you'd be glad."
"Glad!" cried David, his voice rising like a wind. "Good Lord, glad—glad, if a fellow's goin' to lose everything an' then be left alone," he half wailed; "you expect a fellow to be glad if he gets news that he might have to part with the dearest thing he's got?" he went on boisterously. "But I'm makin' a goat o' myself," chastening his tone as he continued; "there ain't no such thing goin' to happen. Who in thunder do you imagine wants our Madeline?—I'd like to see the cuss that'd——"
"But, David," his wife interrupted rather eagerly, "wait till I tell you who it is—or perhaps you know—it's Cecil; and I'm quite sure he'd be ever so attentive, if Madeline would only permit it. And I don't suppose any young gentleman of our acquaintance has the prospects Cecil has."
David's face wore a strange expression; half of pity it seemed to be and half of fiery wrath. "That's so, mother," he said in quite a changed voice; "if all reports is true there ain't many with prospects like his—he'll get what's comin' to him, I reckon. But there's one thing I'm goin' to tell you, mother," and the woman started at the changed tone of the words, so significant in its sternness, "an' I'll jest tell it to you now—an' it's this. Mebbe we'll have to beg our bread afore we're through—but Cecil ain't never goin' to have our Madeline—not if me an' God can help it," whereat he turned and went almost noiselessly from the room, his white lips locked in silence. And Madeline wondered why his eyes rested so yearningly on her when he returned, filled with such hungering tenderness as though he were to see her never more.
XXIII
INGENUITY OF LOVE