"Old Willis is counting his
money-bags again, I guess!" Bernard would say lightly, as the familiar
shuffling to and fro caught his ear; while his mother, to banish the
shadow of envious discontent, quietly told a decade of her Rosary.
The conversation anent the subject of the coal kept recurring to her mind
with odd persistency. Repeatedly of late she had awakened in the night
and heard the miser stumbling around; several times she was almost
certain he was in her cellar, and--yes, surely, _at the
coal_,--purloining it piece by piece, probably. Then just as, fully
aroused, she awaited further proof, the noise would cease, and she would
conclude she must have been mistaken. At last, however, it would seem
that her suspicions were confirmed.
On this occasion Mrs. Farrell had not retired at the usual hour. It was
after midnight, yet she was still occupied in a rather hopeless effort to
patch Jack's only pair of trousers; for he evinced as remarkable an
ability to wear out clothes as any son of a millionaire. The work was
tedious and progressed slowly, for her fingers were stiff and the effort
of sewing painful.
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