“Indeed! I know her very well. Have done considerable law business for her since her husband’s death. She has four children and in quite straitened circumstances.”
James Matthews felt a sudden increase of circulation about his heart.
She was free to wed him now, if she would, he thought to himself. Now he could be a father to those children, and do for them all he had longed to do for her.
When the lawyer went home, much to his surprise Mr. Matthews accompanied him.
The knock at Mrs. Stillson’s door was answered by a bright, noble-looking boy of eighteen. The mother, with the same sweet face as in her girlhood, was called in.
“Oh, James!” she said, and the tears gathered in her eyes. “I am so glad to see you once more!”
Perhaps she thought he held her hand too long and earnestly for a man who probably had a wife and children at home.
“I have thought,” she added, “if I could only see you in our present circumstances, you might be induced to take our youngest, a boy of six, and adopt him as your own.”
“Martha, may I take the boy, and take his mother with him?” said James Matthews, his heart almost too full for utterance.