But this afternoon life, for the first time, looked different. It was as if, unaided, he couldn't carry the burden any more. There were younger shoulders than his, and perhaps it was time now to call on them to share the task.
"I'm an old man, Jennie," he said, as they began to move slowly toward Palisade Walk. "I haven't felt old till lately; but now--now I'm all in. I don't suppose I'll ever get a chance to do a day's work again."
When she rallied him on this, he told her the story of his day, omitting the "old bum" incident. He must spare his children that, even if he couldn't have been spared himself.
This tale, delivered without emphasis, was more terrible to Jennie than all the pangs of conscience. Had she but been true to the promises made to Mrs. Collingham, she could have said, "Father dear, you'll never have to worry any more." Two hours earlier, twenty-five thousand dollars had been within her grasp, and she had let it go. "All that money," she sighed to herself, "_and love_!"
But since it would be within her grasp to-morrow, a new thought came to her. The hundred dollars she would ultimately return to Bob need not be in exactly the same bills. There was no reason why she should not use this amount and restore it from the wealth to come. Bob couldn't possibly tell the difference between the paper that made up one sum of a hundred dollars and the paper that made up another. She would have preferred to hand it back without touching it, but, in view of the family need, fastidiousness was out of place.
As they emerged into Palisade Walk and the vast panorama lay below them, she slipped her arm through his.
"Daddy," she said, caressingly, "what should you say if you saw me with a hundred dollars?"
To Josiah, it was the kind of question children ask when their imaginations go off on flights. It would have been the same thing had she said a thousand or a million. Nevertheless, he replied, more gravely than she had expected:
"What should I say, my dear? I should say you couldn't have come by it honestly."
"It's no use talking about that, my dear, because I know you couldn't. If you had a hundred dollars, some man would have given it to you, and no man would give it to you unless--"