Page:A daughter of the rich, by M. E. Waller.djvu/30

12 the Doctor had said—she got no further with these thoughts, so intent was she on the contents of the letter.

Chi, with an eye to prolonging his stay till he should know the why and wherefore of a letter from the great Doctor at this season of the year, took another cup of the tea.

"Ben, oh, Ben!" cried Mrs. Blossom, in a faint, glad voice; and therewith, to her husband's amazement, she handed him the letter, put both arms around his neck, and, dropping her head on his shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break.

Chi softly put down his half-emptied cup and tiptoed with creaking boots from the room.

"Can't stand that, nohow," he muttered to himself in the shed; and, forgetting to light his lantern, he felt his way up the backstairs to his lodging in the room overhead, blinded by some suspicious drops of water in his eyes, which he cursed for frost melting from his bushy eyebrows.

"Oh, Ben, think of it!" she cried, when her husband had soothed and calmed her. "Twenty-five dollars a week; that makes a little more than twelve hundred a year. Why, we can pay off all the mortgage and be free from that nightmare."

For answer her husband drew her closer to him, and late into the night they sat before the dying fire, talking and planning for the future.

"Children," she said at breakfast next morning, and her voice sounded so bright and cheery that the room seemed full of sunshine, although the sky was a hard, cold gray,