They were gone now, never to come
back. It had come right. She, at least, thought his repentance sincere.
If the others wronged him, and it hurt her bitterly that they did, that
would come right some day too, she would think, as she looked at the
tired, sullen face of the old man bent to the window-pane, afraid to go
out. They had very cheerful little suppers there by themselves in the
odd, bare little room, as homely and clean as Lois herself.
Sometimes, late at night, when he had gone to bed, she sat alone in the
door, while the moonlight fell in broad patches over the quiet square,
and the great poplars stood like giants whispering together. Still the
far sounds of the town came up cheerfully, while she folded up her
knitting, it being dark, thinking how happy an ending this was to a
happy day. When it grew quiet, she could hear the solemn whisper of the
poplars, and sometimes broken strains of music from the cathedral in the
city floated through the cold and moonlight past her, far off into the
blue beyond the hills. All the keen pleasure of the day, the warm,
bright sights and sounds, coarse and homely though they were, seemed to
fade into the deep music, and make a part of it.
Yet, sitting there, looking out into the listening night, the poor
child's face grew slowly pale as she heard it.
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