it were, in a softly
gracious feminine presence, made evident by wide rustlings of silken
skirts, pointed foldings of lavender-scented white wool over
out-stretched arms, and heaving waves of white lace over a high,
curving bosom. Doctor Prescott's wife drew Jerome to her as if he
were still a child, and kissed him on his cheek. "Give your sister my
fondest love, and may God give you your own reward, dear boy," she
said, in her beautiful voice, which was like no other woman's for
sweetness and softness, though she was as large as a queen.

Then she was gone, and Jerome went home, with the scent of lavender
from her laces and silks and white wools still in his nostrils, and a
subtler sweetness of womanhood and fine motherhood dimly perceived in
his soul.

When he got home, he knew, by the light in the parlor windows, that
Lawrence was with his sister. He had been in bed some time before he
heard the front door shut.

Elmira, when she came up-stairs, opened his door a crack, and
whispered, in a voice tremulous with happiness, "Jerome, you asleep?"

"No."

"Do--you know--about Lawrence and me?"

"Yes; I'm real glad, Elmira."

"I hope you'll forgive me for speaking to you the way I did, Jerome."

"That's all right, Elmira."

Chapter XL

The next morning Jerome was just going out of the yard when he met
Paulina Maria Judd and Henry coming in. Paulina Maria held her blind
son by the hand, but he walked with an air of resisting her guidance.

"J'rome, I've come to see you about that money," said Paulina Maria.
"I hear you're goin' to give us two hundred and fifty dollars. I told
you once we wouldn't take your money."

"This is different. This is the money Colonel Lamson left me, that
I'd agreed to give away."

"It ain't any different to us. You can keep it."

"I sha'n't keep it, anyway. For God's sake, aunt, take it! Henry,
take it, and get your eyes cured!"

"I sha'n't take money that's given in any such way, and neither will
my son. I haven't changed my mind about what I said the other night,
and neither has he. You need this money yourself. If the money had
been left to us, it would have been different; we sha'n't take it,
and you needn't offer it to us; you can count us out in your
division. We sha'n't take what Doctor Prescott has offered
neither--to give us the mortgage on our house. It's an honest debt,
and we don't want to shirk it. If we're paupers, we'll be paupers of
God, but of no man!