“I can't go back,” said Lemuel. “I'm going to get married.”
“Married!” cried Sewell in consternation.
“My—the lady that I'm going to marry—has been sick, ever since the first of October, and I haven't had a chance to look up any kind of work. But she's better now; and I've heard of this place I can get. I don't like to trouble you; but—everything's gone—I've got my mother down here helping take care of her; and I must do something. I don't know just when I can pay you back; but I'll do it sometime.”
“Oh, I'm sure of that,” said Sewell, from the abyss of hopeless conjecture into which these facts had plunged him; his wandering fancy was dominated by the presence of Lemuel's mother with her bloomers in Boston. “I—I hope there's nothing serious the trouble with your—the lady?” he said, rubbing away with his hand the smile that came to his lips in spite of him.
“It's lung trouble,” said Lemuel quietly.
“Oh!” responded Sewell. “Well! Well!” He shook himself together, and wondered what had become of the impulse he had felt to scold Barker for the idea of getting married. But such a course now seemed not only far beyond his province,—he heard himself saying that to Mrs. Sewell in self-defence when she should censure him for not doing it,—but utterly useless in view of the further complications. “Well! This is great news you tell me—a great surprise. You're—you're going to take an important step—You—you—Of course, of course! You must have a great many demands upon you, under the circumstances. Yes, yes! And I'm very glad you came to me. If your mind is quite made up about——”
“Yes, I've thought it over,” said Lemuel. “The lady has had to work all her life, and she—she isn't used to what I thought—what I intended—any other kind of people; and it's better for us both that I should get some kind of work that won't take me away from her too much——” He dropped his head, and Sewell with a flash of intelligence felt a thrill of compassionate admiration for the poor, foolish, generous creature, for so Lemuel complexly appeared to him.
Again he forbore question or comment.
“Well—well! we must look you up, Mrs. Sewell and I. We must come to see your—the lady.” He found himself falling helplessly into Lemuel's way of describing her. “Just write me your address here,”—he put a scrap of paper before Lemuel on the davenport,—“and I'll go and get you the money.”
He brought it back in an envelope which held a very little more than Lemuel had asked for—Sewell had not dared to add much—and Lemuel put it in his pocket.