Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/278

 "Certainly not," said his father, "though the heavens fall . . . And now, my dear boy, it is getting late, and I am supposed to keep early hours."

"You haven't told me anything about yourself."

"There is so little to tell . . . John, our strong man is gone, and I shall probably live to be as old as Methuselah!"

Edward looked into his father's eyes, and seemed to see death in them—death not very far off. He tried to smile cheerfully, but succeeded only in twitching the corners of his mouth.

There was a difficulty about going to town early the next morning. Dear Mother seemed to think that business, owing to darling John's recent death, ought to be postponed; but since the business related to John's wife and the child, and since they might be in real need, Edward did not feel that it ought to be delayed on any account. A delay might result in the sudden appearance of the young woman and the offspring at the rectory, and Edward dreaded anything of that kind, not only for his mother's sake but for the young woman's.

So he said that the business really involved his financial future—it did, more than he realized at the time—and he was sorry, and he would do anything in the world that was reasonable to please