Leisurely could we learn that Little Miss was getting
back her strength, and Miss Caroline and I could laugh at Clem's fear
that she also would find herself "pah'lyzed in th' frame."
After that Miss Caroline and I were free to consider another matter,
weighty enough with pneumonia out of the running. This was a matter of
ways and means--of sheer, downright money.
When Clem, in the first days of his sickness, had warned Miss Caroline
that she would not be let to waste "all that gold money," his lofty
reference, as a matter of cold figures, was to a sum less than nine
dollars. I forget the precise amount, but that is near enough--nine
dollars, in round numbers. And the winter had been an expensive one.
At the lowest time of doubt, when Miss Caroline had affairs of extreme
gravity to face, I had spoken to her incidentally of money that I owed
to Clem for services performed, and I had, in fact, paid several
instalments of the debt as money seemed to be needed.
When Clem's recovery was assured and I urged Miss Caroline to go to
Little Miss, she asked me bluntly what sum I had owed Clem. I felt
obliged to confess that it was not more than two hundred dollars.
This must have surprised Miss Caroline as much as it rejoiced her, for
she took up the matter with Clem, and in so clumsy a fashion that he,
perhaps owing to his enfeebled condition, witlessly made a confession at
variance with mine, and with an effect of candor that moved his
questioner to take his word rather than that of an officer and a
gentleman.
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