"It does not matter," she thought. "A surprise will be quite as
pleasant, and then Mr. Liston may object to it as a silly girl's fancy."
This was the previous night, and now this morning another demand had
come in the shape of Muggins weeping in her lap, of Lulu begging to be
saved from 'Lina Worthington, and from 'Lina herself asking Hugh for the
money Alice knew he had not got.
"But I have," she whispered, "and I will send it too."
Just then Adah came up the stairs, and Alice called her in, asking if
she still wished to go to Terrace Hill.
"Yes, more than ever," Adah replied. "Hugh is rational, I hear, so I can
talk to him about it before long. You must be present, as I'm sure he
will oppose it."
Meantime in the sickroom there was an anxious consultation between
mother and son touching the fifty dollars which must be raised for
Nellie Tiffton's sake.
"Were it not that I feel bound by honor to pay that debt, 'Lina might
die before I'd send her a cent," said Hugh, his eyes blazing with anger
as he recalled the contents of 'Lina's letter.
But how should they raise the fifty? Alice's bills had been paid
regularly thus far, paid so delicately too, so as a matter of right,
that Mrs. Worthington, who knew how sadly it was needed in their present
distress, had accepted it unhesitatingly, but Hugh's face flushed with a
glow of shame when he heard from his mother's lips that Alice was really
paying them her board.
"It makes me hate myself," he said, groaning aloud, "that I should
suffer a girl like her to pay for the bread she eats. Oh, poverty,
poverty! It is a bitter drug to swallow." Then like a brave man who saw
the evil and was willing to face it, Hugh came back to the original
point, "Where should they get the money?"
"He might borrow it of Alice, as 'Lina suggested," Mrs. Worthington
said, timidly, while Hugh almost leaped upon the floor.
"Never, mother, never! Miss Johnson shall not be made to pay our debts.
There's Uncle John's gold watch, left as a kind of heirloom, and very
dear on that account. I've carried it long, but now it must go. There's
a pawnbroker's office opened in Frankfort--take it there this very
afternoon, and get for it what you can. I never shall redeem it. There's
no hope. It was in my vest pocket when I was taken sick."
"No, Hugh, not that. I know how much you prize it, and it's all the
valuable thing you have. I'll take in washing first," Mrs. Worthington
said.
But Hugh was in earnest, and his mother brought the watch from the nail
over the mantel, where, all through his sickness it had ticked away the
weary hours, just as it ticked the night its first owner died, with only
Hugh sitting near, and listening as it told the fleeting moments.