Page:Hopkinson Smith--Tom Grogan.djvu/191

 kitchen making some coffee for the exhausted workers, and he was helping her.

Tom realized fully all that had happened. She knew who had saved Patsy's life. She remembered how he laid her boy in her arms, and she still saw the deathly pallor in his face as he staggered and fell. What had he not done for her and her household since he entered her service? If he loved Jennie, and she him, was it his fault? Why did she rebel, and refuse this man a place in her home? Then she thought of her own Tom no longer with her, and of her fight alone and without him. What would he have thought of it? How would he have advised her to act? He had always hoped such great things for Jennie. Would he now be willing to give her to this stranger? If she could only talk to her Tom about it all!

As she sat, her head in her hand, the smoking stable, the eager wild-eyed crowd, the dead horses, faded away and became to her as a dream. She heard nothing but the voice of Jennie and her lover, saw only the white face of her boy. A sickening sense of utter loneliness swept over her. She rose and moved away.