"Why wouldn't they, John? It isn't money a woman wants to make her happy. I've tried that. Grace tried it. It doesn't work. It takes something else besides money, I reckon. We're lucky when we find that, any of us, I reckon. If we don't, we've got to take just what God gives us. But money doesn't buy everything in the world. John, sometimes I think it buys about as little as anything you can think of!" She gulped just a little in her thin throat.
"All the same," said he firmly and generously, by this time almost fully the great John Rawn once more, "it was very decent of you, Laura."
"Well, never mind about that, John. It was you who made it. I never did understand how you earned it so fast. I'm glad if it will do you any good--if you're sure it will do you any good. And see, John," she added shyly, fumbling again in her bag, "I brought you a little present, John. I've been doing these, you see. I make quite a lot out of it. I never used any of that money you gave me, at all--I did these things--the way I did before, when we were getting our start together, John, you know. I thought--maybe--you'd like a pair."
She held out to him a pair of braces, embroidered carefully in silks. He took them in his hand. She also looked at them closely, in professional scrutiny, her steel bowed spectacles on nose. She pronounced them good.
"But, John," she added curiously--"you know, while I was up there, doing what I could for Grace and the baby--it seemed to me like as if I heard some funny sort of noise down here--something like a shot. What was it?"
"It was some of those confounded laboring people," said John Rawn, frowning. "Yes--they came here after Halsey."
"Well," said John Rawn, "Halsey--Charley Halsey--you remember him, I believe? Well, they shot him.
--"Good-night, Laura," he added suddenly, and held out his hand to her, generously, nobly. "I'm very sleepy. I've been up so long--and I've a lot to do to-morrow. After all, there's no use in _our_ having hard feelings. Good-by."
The source book's illustrations had no captions. The in brackets were added by the transcriber. Some of them were my best guess as to the persons in them.]
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of John Rawn, by Emerson Hough