"May I be permitted to ask what all this amounts to?" asked Henry, with commendable resignation.
"Just two hundred dollars," sharply replied Mrs. Grimgriskin; "being eighty for board, and one hundred and twenty for extras. I'm a woman of few words"----
"And I'm a man of less," said Henry, "I can't pay it."
"I had my misgivings," cried the landlady, tartly, "notwithstanding your boast of being connected with the rich Mr. Granite. Allow me to say, sir," she continued, seating herself upon a chair, "I've just sent for a hackman to take your trunks away, and I mean to retain the furniture until some arrangement is made."
"May I come in?" murmured a small, but apparently well-known voice at the door, from the alacrity with which Henry's poor, young wife rushed to open it, admitting old Sterling, the clerk.
"Let me look in your eyes," cried she; "is there any hope?"
"Heaven help us!" she exclaimed, as she tottered back to her seat.
"Heaven has helped you, my bright bird," said Sterling. "I only shook my head to make your joy the greater."
"What say you?" exclaimed Travers; "has that stony heart relented?"
"It is not a stony heart," replied Sterling; "I am ashamed of you for saying so. It's a good, generous heart. It has made mine glow with long-forgotten joy this day."
"Does he give us relief?" inquired Henry.
"He does," said the old man, the enthusiasm of generous happiness lighting up his features; "great, enduring relief. What do you think of five thousand dollars?"
"You dream, I dream!" cried Travers, starting up in astonishment; while Mrs. Grimgriskin, smoothing her unamiable wrinkles, and her apron at the same time, at the mention of so _respectable_ a sum, came forward, saying, in her newest-lodger voice--
"You'll excuse me; but I'm a woman of few words. I hope you won't take anything I've said as at all personal to you, but only an endeavor, as far as in me lies, to keep up the credit of my own establishment; as for that little trifle between us, of course you can take your own time about that." So saying, and with a profusion of unnoticed courtesies, she quitted the room.
She had scarcely done so, when, with a deep groan of agony, Sterling pressed his hand against his head, and staggered to a chair. In an instant, Henry and his wife were by his side.