Sarah Nisson nodded her pretty head. She leant her ample proportions towards the stove and emulated her husband's attitude, warming her plump hands. Her brown eyes were twinkling, and her broad, unlined brow was calmly serene. Her iron-grey hair was as carefully dressed as though she were still in the twenties, moreover it was utterly untouched by any of the shams so beloved of the modern woman of advancing years.
"The death of his poor wife almost seems to have unhinged him," she said, with a troubled pucker of her brows. "But—but I don't wonder, I really don't. She was the sweetest girl. Poor soul. And that bonny wee boy. But there, I can't bear to think of it all. You mustn't blame him too much, Charles. I guess you don't in your heart. It's just as his attorney you feel mad about things. It's best to remember you were his friend first, and only his adviser, and man of business, after. The whole thing makes me feel I want to cry. And that poor girl coming to see you to-day. The other Nancy, I mean. I don't think I'd feel so bad about things if it wasn't for her. You know, I like Leslie. And I was as fond of his wife as I just could be, for all she made a fool of herself when she married that hateful James McDonald, who was no better than a revolutionary. Thank goodness he died and got out before he could do any harm. But I do think Leslie and poor Nancy were selfish about her child. I don't believe it was so much him as Nancy. From the moment Leslie came on the scene it was she who kept the poor child at college. She never even let him see her. And she's such a bonny girl, too. Do you know, I believe Nancy's death, and even the death of the baby boy, wouldn't have meant half so much to Leslie if he'd had Nancy's own girl with him. She'd have got herself right into his heart with her bonny ways, and her hazel eyes that look like great, big smiling flowers. Then her hair. She's a lovely, lovely child. I wish she was mine. I'd like to have her right here always. Couldn't you fix it that way?"
The man shook his head.
"I'd like to—but—"
"But what?"
"You see there's a whole lot to think about," the lawyer went on seriously. "Why, I don't even know how to get through my interview with her to-day without lying to her like a politician. Now just get a look at the position. Here's a girl, a beautiful, high-spirited girl of sixteen, straight out from college, at the beginning of life, with her, head full of 'whys,' and 'wherefores.' Sixteen's well-nigh grown up these days, mind you. Her mother's dead, and curiously the fact didn't seem to break her up as you'd have expected it to. Why?" The man shrugged. "It's not because she lacks feeling. Oh, no. Maybe it's because of the strength of those feelings. Remember her mother married Leslie when the child was thirteen. A good understanding age. She was never allowed to see her father. No. She was packed off to school and kept there—"
"Yes, I know," Sarah broke in, with impatient warmth. "And just at the time a girl most needs she never even saw her mother for over three years. God doesn't give us women our babies to treat them as if they weren't our own flesh and blood. Young Nancy was left to those maiden dames at college, who don't know more about a child than is laid down by highbrow officials in the text books they need to study to qualify for their posts. They haven't a notion beyond stuffing her poor wee head with the sort of view of life set down in fool history books. They say she's clever and bright. Well, that's all they care about. When they've done with her they'll have knocked all the girl out of her, and turned her adrift on the world behind a pair of disfiguring spectacles, with her beautiful hair all scratched back off her pretty face, and maybe 'bobbed,' and they'll fill her grips with pamphlets and literature enough to stock a patent med'cine factory, instead of the lawn, and lace, and silk a girl should think about, and leave her with as much chance of getting happily married as a queen mummy of the Egyptians. It's a shame, just a real shame. Why, if that poor, lonesome child came right along to me, I'd—"
"Teach her all the bright tricks of hunting down a husband and—hooking him." The lawyer shook his head and smiled. "You know, Sally, you're almost an outrage on the subject of marriage. Sometimes I wonder the sort of tricks I was up against when I—"
A plump warning finger and smiling threat interrupted the laughing charge.
"You were due at the office long ago, Charles," his wife admonished. "If you aren't careful I'll have to pack you off right away."
"That's all right, Sally," the man demurred. "I won't go further with that. I'll get back to the things I was saying before you interrupted." His pale blue eyes became serious again. "Do you think Nancy didn't understand why she was packed off to school—and kept there? Of course she did. She knew she wasn't wanted. She knew she was in the way. She must not be permitted to intrude on this stepfather, or her mother's new life. It was all a bit heartless, and if I know anything of the child, she understands it that way. I felt that when she came to see her mother, and went to her funeral. Now then, Nancy's coming to see me to-day. Remember she's sixteen. She's got to learn from me the settlement Leslie's made on her. She's got to learn further that she isn't likely to ever see her stepfather. She knows I'm his business man. She knows I'm his friend. Well, when she's financially independent, do you think she'll feel like rushing into our arms, here, for a home, feeling the way I believe she does about her parent? It's going to be difficult, and—damned unpleasant. And for all I'm ready to help Leslie anyway I know, I'd rather see anybody on his behalf than that kiddie, with her wide, honest, angry eyes and red hair. I'm not going to press our home on her, Sally, because, sooner or later, if she accepted it, which I don't believe she would, she'd have to learn things of Leslie, and—well, the affairs you know about. That must not be. She's not going to learn these things from us. I'm going to do the best I know for the child, and when it comes to the matter of a home she must choose for herself. There's always her mother's folk, or even James McDonald's folk—"
"God forbid! No. Oh, no." The woman's instant denial was horrified. "Not the McDonald lot. They're all revolutionaries. All of them. It's—it's unthinkable. It certainly is."
The man moved away.
"That's so," he agreed. "Well, anyway, I'll do the best I know for the child, Sally. You can trust me."
The woman's anxiety abated, and she rose from her chair.
"I know that, Charles," she said. "But the McDonalds! They're—"
"Sure they are." The man laughed. "Well, good-bye, my dear. I'll tell you all about it when I've fixed things. Thank goodness it's quit snowing and the sun's shining again. I wish I felt as good as it looks outside here."
* * * * *
Charles Nisson had become a lawyer without any marked inclination or enthusiasm for his profession. It had been simply a matter of following the father before him. It would have been much the same if his father had been a farmer, or a politician, or anything else. The son was patient, temperate, and of no great ambition. But he was also keenly intelligent. Without impulse, or striking originality, but with a tremendous capacity for hard work, he was bound to be moderately successful in any career. In his father's profession his temperament was particularly suited, and in spite of lacking enthusiasm he had become unquestionably a better lawyer than the country attorney he had succeeded.
Just now his mind was filled with unease. The matter of his forthcoming interview with a child of sixteen years had only small place in the affairs which disturbed him. His real concern was for his friend, Leslie Standing, and the disaster, which, in a seemingly overwhelming rush had befallen at far-off Sachigo. Again his trouble had no relation to these things as they affected his own worldly affairs. It was of the man himself he was thinking.
He knew it all now. He had painfully learned the complete story of disaster. And, to his sturdy mind, it was a deplorable example of almost unbelievable human weakness.
Standing had conveyed his final determination to abandon his Labrador enterprise in the correspondence which had passed between them during the three months which had elapsed since the funeral of his wife and stillborn child. And during that time their friendship had been sorely tested. There had been times when the lawyer's native patience had been unequal to the strain. There had been times when his temper had leapt from under the bonds which so strongly held it. But for all the ordeals of that prolonged correspondence, for all he deplored the pitiful weakness