The two were seated in this way one afternoon, Margaret resting after a day's work, when Oliver opened the door. She had made a sketch of Richard's head that very morning as he lay back in a big chair, a strong, vigorous piece of work which she afterward finished.
Richard looked up and his face broke into a joyous smile.
"Bring a chair, my son," he cried, "and sit by me. I have something to say to you." When, a few moments later, Margaret had left the room to give some directions to Mrs. Mulligan, he added: "I have been telling Margaret that you both do wrong in putting off your marriage. These delays fret young people's lives away. She tells me it is your wish. What are you waiting for?"
"Only for money enough to take care of her, father. Madge has been accustomed to more comforts than I can give her. She would, I know, cheerfully give up half of her income, small as it is, to me if I would let her, but that is not the way I want to make her happy. Don't worry, dear old dad, the Fish portrait will pull us out"--and he leaned down and put his arms about his father's neck as he used to do when he was a boy. "I shall get there before long."
Oliver did not tell his father what a grief it had been to him to keep Madge waiting, nor how he had tried to make it up to her in every way while he had made his fight alone. Nor did he tell Richard of the principal cause of his waiting--that the mortgage to which his mother had pledged her name and to which he had morally pledged his own was still unpaid.
Richard listened to Oliver's outburst without interrupting him.
"I only wanted to do the best I could for you my son," he answered, laying his fingers on Oliver's hand. "I was thinking of nothing but your happiness.
During the last few days, since I have become assured that this negotiation would go through, I have decided to carry out a plan which has long been in my mind and which, now that I know about Margaret, makes it all the more necessary. I am going to make provision for you immediately. This, I hope, will be to-morrow or the next day at farthest. The contracts are all ready for our signatures, and only await the return of one of the attorneys who is out of town. The cash sum they pay for the control of the patents is, as you know, a considerable one; then I get nearly half of the capital stock of the new company.
I am going to give you, at once, one-third of the money and one-third of the stock."
Oliver raised his hand in protest, but Richard kept on.
"It is but just, my son. There are but three of us --your mother, yourself, and I. It is only your share. I won't have you and Margaret waiting until I am gone"--and he looked up with a smile on his face.
Oliver stood for a moment dazed at the joyous news, his father's hand in his, the tears dimming his eyes. While he was thanking him, telling him how glad he was that the struggle was over and how proud he was of his genius, Margaret stole up behind him and put her hands over his eyes, bidding him guess who it was--as if there could be another woman in the whole world who would take the liberty. Oliver caught her in his arms and kissed her, whispering in her ears the joyous news with her cheek close to his; and Margaret looked from one to the other, and then put her arms around Richard and kissed him without a word--the first time she had ever dared so much.
Oh, but there were joyous times that followed!
Mrs. Mulligan, at a whispered word from her mistress, ran down-stairs as fast as her old legs could carry her and came back with her arms full of bundles, which she dumped upon her small kitchen-table.
And Margaret put on a clean white apron, white as snow, and rolled up her sleeves, showing her beautiful arms above her elbows--Oliver always vowed that she had picked them up where the Milo had dropped them--and began emptying the contents of a bowl of oysters, one of Mrs. Mulligan's packages, into a chafing-dish. And Oliver wheeled out the table and brought out the cloth, and dear old Richard, his face full of smiles, placed the napkins with great precision beside each plate, puckering them up into little sheaves, "just as Malachi would have done," he said; and then Margaret whispered to Oliver if he didn't think "it would be just the very thing," they were "so anxious to see him"--and Oliver thought it would--he was cutting bread at the moment, and getting it ready for Mrs. Mulligan to toast on her cracker-box of a range; and Margaret, with her arms and her cheeks scarlet, ran out in the hall and down the corridor, and came back, out of breath, with two other girls--one in a calico frock belted in at her slender waist, and the other in a black bombazine and a linen collar. And Richard looked into their faces, and took them both by the hand and told them how glad he was to be permitted to share in their merrymakings; and then, when Oliver had drawn out the chairs--one was a stool, by the way--the whole party sat down, Oliver at the foot and Richard on Margaret's right, the old gentleman, remarking, as he opened his napkin, that but one thing was wanting to complete his happiness, and that was Oliver's mother, who of all women in the world would enjoy the occasion the most.
But the happiest time of all was over the soup, or rather over the tureen, or rather what was inside of it--or worse still, what was not. This wonderful soup had been ordered at the restaurant across the way, and was to be brought in smoking hot at the appointed time by a boy. The boy arrived on the minute, and so did the tureen--a gayly flowered affair with a cover, the whole safely ensconced in a basket.
