"Who to?" she asked. "If it's some corner loafer, Edie--" Edith
had gained new courage and new facility. Anything was right that
drove the tortured look from her mother's eyes.
"You can ask him when he comes home this evening."
"Edie! Not Willy?"
"You've guessed it," said Edith, and burying her face in the bed
clothing, said a little prayer, to be forgiven for the lie and for
all that she had done, to be more worthy thereafter, and in the end
to earn the love of the man who was like God to her.
There are lies and lies. Now and then the Great Recorder must put
one on the credit side of the balance, one that has saved intolerable
suffering, or has made well and happy a sick soul.
Mrs. Boyd lay back and closed her eyes.
"I haven't been so tickled since the day you were born," she said.
She put out a thin hand and laid it on the girl's bowed head. When
Edith moved, a little later, her mother was asleep, with a new look
of peace on her face.
It was necessary before Ellen saw her mother to tell her what she
had done. She shrank from doing it. It was one thing for Willy to
have done it, to have told her the plan, but Edith was secretly
afraid of Ellen.
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