"You can take it from me that if you hadn't treated her as jolly well as you did in that capital article of yours, we shouldn't be trying to lasso you now onto the staff of the Weekly." Herrick started, but the man of the world was not easily checked. "You were awfully decent, you know, to all of us, and Corey was all the more pleased because that—that last day, old Jim was down at the office till three o'clock—the first day after he was home, too,—working like a dog, and yet when he found that letter of Rennett's introducing you he was as pleased as Punch, and when he made the appointment with you for next day, he said to Corey, 'People are taking that boy pretty easy yet awhile, but he's the best short-story writer on this side of the Atlantic; and if he's really got a novel about him, the old house will show him it's still awake.'" The man of the world repeated these phrases with an innocent satisfaction in having them at first hand, and Herrick's own heart went questing into the future.
Then his attention returned to the words of his young friend. "We don't think we've done enough for her, and we want to do all we can do."
"Miss Hope?"
"Of course. You see, we don't any of us feel she was wrong in quarreling with Jim—except the mater, who thinks she ought to have let him cut her throat for breakfast every morning and damned glad to get him—and, considering everything, we think she let him down pretty easy at the inquest. There's no denying the dear old fellow had been a gay one in his time, and, of course, he drove a high-spirited girl like that frantic with a lot of antiquated notions about the stage. You see, he was pretty close to thirty-five, and when a man gets along about there he's apt to lose touch with what's going on. Well, having her in our pew and our carriage at the funeral didn't shut all the fools' mouths in New York nor Springfield either! So now we're going to do something really swotting—we've taken a box for her first night, and we're going to get mother into it, mourning and all, if we have to bring her in a bag. It's our duty. Read that."
"My dear and kind Mr. Ingham (ran Christina's letter): You must try and be patient with me, and not think hardly of me, when I tell you that I can not profit by the terms of Jim's will. He made those provisions for the girl who was to be his wife, and not for me who never could be.
"As I write this I feel your good heart harden to me, with the sense that I never loved him. But oh, believe me!—time was when I loved him better than earth or heaven. We couldn't agree, he and I. Let it remain my consolation that between us there was never any question of expedient nor compromise.
"If she can bear it, give my love to his mother.
"My heart is full of fondest gratitude to all that family which I should have been so proud to enter. And do you keep a little kindness for your unhappy,
"Christina Hope."
"What do you think of that? Won't take a cent! You can easily see," commented the wise one, "that they'd have made it up all right. Splendid girl! Best thing the poor old chap ever did was trying to get her into the family. I don't suppose you're as hipped about her good looks as I am? Takes a special kind of eye, I fancy! I snaked this particularly to show you—but we want everybody to know she's turned down the coin. And we're going to have the beast that fired that shot if he's alive on this planet. 'Tisn't only on Jim's account! It's for her—it's the only way you can knock that damned lie on the head about her being up there in his rooms that night.—Chris! Why, she's a regular kid! And the straightest kid that ever lived! We mean to keep the police hot at it. And look here what I'm turning in to them!"
It was a typewritten envelope, postmarked "New York City" and addressed to Mr. James Ingham.
"We found it, opened, in his desk at the office," the boy explained. "But we've only just got it away from my mother." Its contents were a piece of red ribbon and a single sheet of paper, closely typed.
The Arm of Justice warns Mr. James Ingham—
("Is this a joke?") "Go on! Read it!"