And the other man said, “All you want of me is money.”
“You taught me that, Father.”
“Blame it on me——”
“You are to blame. You and Mother—did you ever show me the finer things?”
Their angry voices seemed to beat against the noise of the wind and the sighing trees, so that the Small Girl’s mother shivered, and drew her cape around her, and ran on as fast as she could to her little house.
There were all the shadows to meet her, but she did not sit among them. She made coffee and a dish of milk toast, and set the toast in the oven to keep hot, and then she stood at the window watching. At last she saw through the darkness what looked like a star low down, and she knew that the star was a lantern, and she ran and opened the door wide.
And her young husband set the lantern down on the threshold, and took her in his arms, and said, “The sight of you is more than food and drink.”
When he said that, she knew he had had a hard day, but her heart leaped because she knew that what he had said of her was true.
Then they went into the house together, and she set the food before him. And that he might forget his hard day, she told him of her own. And when she came to the part about the Next-Door-Neighbor and the rent, she said,
“I am telling you this because it has a happy ending.”