Page:Tales of John Oliver Hobbes.djvu/184

 At that moment Sacheverell tapped at the door. The room adjoined Legge's.

"It is over," he said, gently.

Mrs. Grimmage entered a cry. "Oh, sir, what do you mean? Whatever do you mean?"

Anna put her hand to her heart. She followed Sacheverell to the bed where Legge was at rest.

"How happy he looks," she said.

"I never know'd he was so handsome," sobbed Mrs. Grimmage.

He had the face his wife knew, and was young again.

The settlement of poor Legge's affairs proved a very small matter. Beyond his few books and pictures and a little plain furniture he had nothing in the world. He had always spent his money as he earned it: sometimes he could have spent rather more than he earned, and still lacked much which many men would have considered necessary to existence. His two little girls whom he kept at a happier and more cheerful home in the country than he could give them in his lodgings, had all his income save the two pounds a week he kept—unwillingly—for his own use. He never allowed himself to think how he longed for his children and the brightness they might have brought into his life. He only thought of what was best for them. They were left totally unprovided for: the sale of his effects produced, as Sacheverell told Anna, two hundred pounds. As he was the purchaser, he probably knew. Lord Middlehurst, out of consideration for his services to The Argus, paid his funeral expenses and the doctor's bill; he also gave him a short obituary, in which he referred