There were two more names down for like sums, after which came a few for ten pounds, a few more for five pounds; there were numerous donations of one pound; after which the subscriptions dropped to ten shillings, to five--
Poor Mrs. Day, casting a sick eye down the list as it continued to appear, once a week, in the local paper, felt ashamed by the paltriness of the amounts which were being amassed in her behalf. "Collected by a well-wisher, six and nine." Several people, modestly content that their initials only should appear, presented two and six.
"Sympathy" was down for a shilling. How degraded she felt as she read! Though, why a gift of a shilling should have hurt her more than the gift of fifty pounds she could not have explained.
When, after dragging on far several weeks, the subscription list was closed the sum collected only amounted to a little over six hundred pounds.
George Boult had been ready to pledge himself that it would have risen to a thousand. He had spared no trouble in the collection of the sum. The list of subscribers hung in a conspicuous place in his shop. He never failed to call to it the attention of his well-to-do customers. A case more needing help was never before the public of Brockenham, he would point out to them.
But the public of Brockenham, severely shocked by the tragic circumstances of William Day's death, recovered quickly from the blow, to say that the death had been the best thing which could happen to the family. To be rid of such a man, to have no more attaching to them the reproach of a father and husband in prison, removed half the woeful load of misfortune from the case. That the children were mostly of an age to earn their own livings, their mother still fairly young and strong, were facts also remembered. Then the word began to be passed about from mouth to mouth--spoken in a whisper at first, but presently a word which might be spoken without fear of rebuke in any ear--that the Day family had always been eaten up with pride, and that the lawyer's troubles had come about through the extravagance of his wife.
The sum of six hundred and forty-nine pounds being collected, what to do with it was the next thing to decide.
The day after the subscription list was closed Mrs. Day went to an interview with George Boult in order to set before him a proposition, the result of the unanimous conclusion to which she and her children after many tearful consultations had come.