It is your
business to make it possible.
He spent but little time at home now; a sofa in the workshop was his
bed. Often Merle would come in with food for him, and seeing how pale
and grey and worn out he was, she did not dare to question him. She
tried to jest instead. She had trained herself long ago to be gay in a
house where shadows had to be driven off with laughter.
But one day, as she was leaving, he held her back, and looked at her
with a strange smile.
"Well, dear?" she said, with a questioning look.
He stood looking at her as before, with the same far-off smile. He was
looking through her into the little world she stood for. This home, this
family that he, a homeless man, had won through her, was it all to go
down in shipwreck?
Then he kissed her eyes and let her go.
And as her footsteps died away, he stood a moment, moved by a sudden
desire to turn to some Power above him with a prayer that he might
succeed in this work. But there was no such Power. And in the end his
eyes turned once more to the iron, the fire, his tools, and his own
hands, and it was as though he sighed out a prayer to these: "Help
me--help me, that I may save my wife and children's happiness."
Sleep? rest? weariness? He had only a year's grace. The bank would only
wait a year.
Winter and spring passed, and one day in July he came home and rushed in
upon Merle crying, "To-morrow, Merle! They will be here to-morrow!"
"Who?"
"The people to look at the machine.
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