But she did not come at once. He heard her voice, with its indescribable gurgle of maternal sweetness, teaching the children to say their prayers.
"God bless mother," was repeated after her, "God bless father—God bless Grandmother Trott, and all the good people in the world. Amen."
"Grandmother Trott!" Joel's whole weary being throbbed with the mental utterance of the words. Then he heard Tilly singing a quaint lullaby sung by the negroes. He wondered if she were purposely delaying her usual after-supper chat with him. After all, what was there to tell her? She had evidently heard the main facts of the matter—that was plain from that irrepressible elation of hers.
She extinguished the light and came out to him, taking the chair he stood holding for her. The starlight gleamed on his bare brow. It was like a well-wrought piece of granite. He brushed his hair back with an unsteady hand as he sat down.
"I was talking with Cavanaugh," he began, and paused to clear the huskiness from his throat.
"I know," Tilly said. "I've heard everything."
"You have?" Joel said, tremulously.
"Yes, the Creswells told me yesterday. You see, Tom Creswell works in the post-office, and the postmaster showed him and the other clerks a letter that Mr. Cavanaugh was sending to John since he got back from New York. Then the postmaster showed him one answering it. The postmaster met Mr. Cavanaugh and asked him about it, and Mr. Cavanaugh told him that it was all a mistake about John and Dora being killed. He says John is doing well and looks well. Oh, I'm so glad—so glad! Ever since the report of that wreck it has been on my mind like a horrible dream. Night and day it would come up to haunt me. Don't you see, I thought— I felt that if—if I had not gone away that day with my father John would have been alive. So now, you see, I haven't that to think about. God spared him and Dora, and Mattie Creswell says they are both happily married."
"Both?" Joel exclaimed. "You haven't got it right, Tilly. Dora married and left him all alone. Cavanaugh says John never married."
"Never married?" Tilly's sweet lips hung quivering. "But Mattie Creswell says her brother told her that Cavanaugh said that John was married to a wealthy girl in high society."