Drawing back
abruptly, she groped her way to the kitchen, and sank into a chair, quite
overcome by emotion. Bernard, having relighted the candle, stood gazing
at her with an abashed air. In a moment or two the shovelling ceased,
and they could hear the old man, totally unconscious of the witnesses to
his good deed, slowly ascending to his cheerless rooms again.
Stingy Willis alone had discovered their need. With a delicacy which
respected their reticence, and shrank from an offer of aid which might
offend, he had hit upon this means of helping them. Clearly, he had been
thus surreptitiously supplying them with fuel for weeks,--a little at a
time, to avoid discovery. And Mrs. Farrell, in her anxiety and
preoccupation, had not realized that, with the steady inroads made upon
it, a ton of coal could not possibly last so long.
"That, of all people, Stingy Willis should be the one to come to our
assistance!" exclaimed the widow.
"And to think he is not _Stingy_ Willis at all! That is the most
wonderful part of it!" responded Bernard.
"Often lately," continued the former, "when I happened to meet him going
in or out, I fancied that his keen old eyes darted a penetrating glance
at me; and the fear that they would detect the poverty we were trying to
hide so irritated me that sometimes I even pretended not to hear his
gruff 'Good-morning!'"
"Well, he's a right jolly fellow!" cried Bernard, enthusiastically,
His mother smiled.
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