“I see; it is hard on you. It is a pity you have to suffer on account of it.”
“Promise me this, Miss Margaret.” Old Walton leaned forward eagerly. “Promise that you will think it over for a day or so. It ain't a thing, anyway, to be decided in a second, like buying a hat or a pair of gloves of such and such a color or material. If you have to go plumb against the boy, do it after mature deliberation. Won't you study over it a day or two?”
“Yes, I can promise that,” Margaret consented. “I'll stop in at the bank and see you soon.”
“Well, that's all a body could ask,” Walton said, gratefully; and, bowing low, he trudged across the grass to his horse and buggy.
CHAPTER XIX
WHEN he had disappeared down the street, Margaret sat staring at the ground, her color still high, her eyes holding a delicate, spiritual effulgence, her breast rising and falling under stress of fiercely contending impulses, my Christian duty to forgive,” she argued. “I know he has repented, and he couldn't have been wholly to blame. His grosser nature was tempted. He fell, but he loved me in a different way. He loves me still, or he wouldn't want me now. He showed it in New York. He has suffered enough, and I ought to take him back. But can I? Can I? How could I forget, with her and his child right under my eyes? Perhaps, if I went to see her, that might help me decide. I ought to have gone, anyway. She really has had a hard life.”
With her hand on her breast, as though the thought had given her actual physical pain, she bowed for a few minutes; then she calmly rose, fastened the strings of her graceful hat under her pretty chin, and walked deliberately down to Mrs. Barry's. Lionel was playing with some colored building-blocks on the porch, and looked up in vast surprise.
“Where is your mother?” Margaret asked, timidly. “May I see her?”