"Been dead long--their pa?"
"He is not dead."
"Oh--beg pardon."
And Joseph drowned a very proper confusion in bitter beer.
"He has only ceased to care about me--or his children," explained
Marie.
Joseph shook his head; but whether denial of such a possibility was
intended, or an expression of sympathy, he did not explain.
"I hope," he said, with a somewhat laboured change of manner, "that
the little ones are in good health."
"Yes, thank you."
Joseph pushed back his chair with considerable vigour, and passed
the back of his hand convivially across his moustache.
"A square meal I call that," he said, with a pleasant laugh, "and I
thank you kindly."
With a tact which is sometimes found wanting inside a better coat
than he possessed, Joseph never again referred to that part of
Marie's life which seemed to hang like a shadow over her being.
Instead, he set himself the task of driving away the dull sense of
care which was hers, and he succeeded so well that Jack Meredith,
lying between sleep and death in his bedroom, sometimes heard a new
strange laugh.
By daybreak next morning Joseph was at sea again, steaming south in
a coasting-boat towards St. Paul de Loanda. He sent off a telegram
to Maurice Gordon in England, announcing the success of the Relief
Expedition, and then proceeded to secure the entire services of a
medical man.
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