"
"A friend of friends," he answered, still in abstraction, his eyes having
that burnished light which belonged to the night of the fire; but yet
realizing that she was a sympathetic soul who had offered to lend him
money without security.
"Oh, indeed yes, as good a friend as you can ever have!" she added.
Something had waked the bigger part of her, which had never been awake in
the days of Palass Poucette. Jean Jacques was much older than she, but
what she felt had nothing to do with age, or place or station. It had
only to do with understanding, with the call of nature and of a
motherhood crying for expression. Her heart ached for him.
"Well, good-bye, my friend," he said, and held out his hand. "I must be
going now."
"Wait," she said, and there was something insistent and yet pleading in
her voice. "I've got something to say. You must hear it. . . . Why should
you go? There is my farm--it needs to be worked right. It has got good
chances. It has water-power and wood and the best flax in the
province--they want to start a flax-mill on it--I've had letters from big
men in Montreal. Well, why shouldn't you do it instead? There it is, the
farm, and there am I a woman alone. I need help. I've got no head. I have
to work at a sum of figures all night to get it straight. . . . Ah,
m'sieu', it is a need both sides! You want someone to look after you; you
want a chance again to do things; but you want someone to look after you,
and it is all waiting there on the farm.
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