Lizzie said something under her breath, and stared with blank bewilderment at her informant.
“Maybe Josh don’t know?”
“Maybe he does know,” retorted Mrs. Butterfield. “Goodness! makes me tremble to think if he hadn’t told me to-night! Supposin’ he hadn’t let on about it till this time to-morrow?”
Lizzie put her hands over her face with an exclamation of dismay.
“Oh, well, there!” Mrs. Butterfield said, comfortably; “I don’t believe Nat’ll mind after he’s been at the Farm a bit. Honest, I don’t, Lizzie. How comes it you didn’t know yourself?”
“I’m sure I don’t know; it ain’t on my certificate, anyhow. Maybe it’s on the voucher; but I ain’t read that since I first went to sign it. I just go every three months and draw my money, and think no more about it. Maybe—if they knew at Washington—”
“Sho! they couldn’t make a difference for one; and it’s just what Josh says—they ain’t goin’ to pay you for havin’ a dead husband if you got a live one. Well, it wouldn’t be sense, Lizzie.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Wait till I look at my paper—”
Mrs. Butterfield followed her into the house, and waited while she lighted a lamp and lifted a blue china vase off the shelf above the stove. “I keep it in here,” Lizzie said, shaking the paper out. Then, unfolding it on the kitchen table, the two women, the lamplight shining upon their excited faces, read the certificate together, aloud, with agitated voices:
“BUREAU OF PENSIONS