“It’s a sight of money,” said Belinda Lamb.  “I s’pose you could mortgage the house, Paulina Maria, and then when Henry got his eyesight back he could work to pay it off.”

A deep red transfused Paulina Maria’s transparent pallor, but before she could speak Ann Edwards interposed.  “Mortgage!” said she, with a sniff of her nostrils, as if she scented battle.  “Mortgage!  Load a poor horse down to the ground till his legs break under him, set a baby to layin’ a stone wall till he drops, but don’t talk to me of mortgages; I guess I know enough about them.  My poor husband would have been alive and well to-day if it hadn’t been for a mortgage.  It sounds easy enough—­jest a little interest money to pay every year, an’ all this money down; but I tell you ’tis like a leech that sucks at body and soul.  You get so the mortgage looks worse than your sins, an’ you pray to be forgiven that instead of them.  I know.  Don’t you have a mortgage put on your house, Paulina Maria Judd, or you’ll rue the day.  I’d—­steal before I’d do it!”

Paulina Maria made no response; she was quite pale again.

“I should think you’d be afraid Henry would go entirely blind if you didn’t have something done for him,” said Belinda Lamb.

“I be,” replied Paulina Maria, sternly.  She rose to go, and Belinda also, with languid response of motion, as if Paulina Maria were an upstirring wind.

When Paulina Maria opened the outer door there was a rush of dank night air.

“Don’t you want me to walk home with you and Aunt Belinda?” asked Jerome.  “It’s pretty dark.”

“No, thank you,” replied Paulina Maria, grimly, looking back, a pale, wavering shape against the parallelogram of night; “the things I’m afraid of walk in the light as much as the dark, an’ you can’t keep ’em off.”

“You make me creep, talkin’ so,” Belinda Lamb said, as she and Paulina Maria, two women of one race, with their souls at the antipodes of things, went down the path together.

“I hope Paulina Maria won’t put a mortgage on her house; Henry ’d better be blind,” said Ann Edwards, when they had gone.

Jerome, finishing his supper, said nothing, but he knew, and Paulina Maria knew that he knew, there was already a mortgage on her house.  When Jerome rose from the table his mother pointed at the parcel on the desk.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I had to buy a coat and vest if I was going to that party,” replied Jerome, with a kind of dogged embarrassment.  He had never felt so confused before his mother’s sharp eyes since he was a child.  If she had blamed him for his purchase, he would have been an easy victim, but she did not.

“What did you get?” she asked.

“I’ll show you in the morning—­you can see them better.”

“Well, you needed them, if you are goin’ to the party.  You’ve got to look a little like folks.  Where you goin’?” for Jerome had started towards the door.