Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

'We were both of us white and shaking as we stood there, but he looked me in the face with a pitiful sort of smile.

'"I could not stand it any longer, Tom," he said; "I suppose it was home-sickness; but it would have killed me in time. I have not got a creature in the world belonging to me. Will you and Susan take me in?" And then, with a laugh, though there were tears in his eyes: "I am precious tired of the husks, old chap."

'Well, I did not seem to have my answer ready; for I was fairly choked at the sight of his changed face, and those poor, pitiable words. But he did not misunderstand me, and when I took his arm and pushed him into a chair by the fire, he looked round the place in a dazed kind of way.

'"Where's Susan?" he asked. "I hope she is not sick, Tom." And with that he did break me down; for the thought of how Susan would have welcomed him—not standing aloof as Prissy was doing—and how she would have heartened us up, in her cheery way, was too much for me, and I fairly cried like a child.

'Well, I knew it was my lad—in spite of his gray hairs—when he cried, too—just for company. Mat had always a kind heart and way with him.

'"I never thought of this, Tom," he said, when we were a bit better. "All to-day Susan's face has been before me bonnie and smiling, as I last saw it. Prissy there is not much like her mother. And so she is in her coffin, poor lass! Well, you are better off than me, Tom, for you have got Prissy there to look after you, and I have neither wife nor children."

'"Do you mean they are gone?" I asked, staring at him; and he nodded in a grim, sorrowful kind of way.

'"I have lost them all. There, we won't talk about that just yet. What is it Susan used to say when the children died? 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.' Those are pious words, Tom." And then he looked at me a bit strangely.

'Well, it was Prissy who interrupted us, by asking if Mat wanted food. And then it turned out that he was 'most starving.

'"I think I was born to ill-luck, Tom," he went on; "for some scamp or other robbed me of my little savings as soon as I reached London, and I had to make shift to pay my fare down here. It is a long story to tell how I found you out. I went to the old place first, and they sent me on here. I had a drop of beer and a crust at the Three Loaves, and old Giles, the ostler, knew me and told me a long yarn about you and Prissy."