Another official committed suicide, and a cloud of gloom spread over the town. Overnight the whole situation changed for the Reeds. The taxes were coming due, and the money in the bank on which they had confidently relied to pay them with was not. Following hard on the heels of that was the discovery that Mr. Reed, a few months before his death, had mortgaged his house in order to get some money to loan to a fellow workman in the office to save the roof being sold from over his head. It appeared that this had been done through a building and loan association that had now gone into the hands of a receiver, and that the mortgage included a personal note Mr. Reed had signed, binding him to pay double the amount of the mortgage in default of payment at the stated times. The mortgage itself had not been unreasonably large, not to the full value of the house, but when it was doubled it became an amount of alarming proportions.

With Mr. Reed’s good salary and his comfortable savings account, there had seemed no risk in this, but with the bank closed indefinitely and nothing to pay the fall installment with, things looked pretty bleak for the Reeds. They knew nothing of business, any of them. Mr. Reed had protected them from care and worry. But when they had concluded their interview with the wily lawyer in charge of the building and loan affairs, they were wiser, and sadder, too. Thurlow Reed stood by the window, staring out at a world that had suddenly gone blank and implacable, appalled at what lay before him, seeing no way around it.

It was very still in the big, old-fashioned parlor after the lawyer had gone. Rilla sat staring at her brother’s back and trying to visualize the future, aghast at the cloud of trouble that seemed to have settled over them.

The mother sat there quietly with her hands in her lap and slow tears stealing down her soft cheeks. Then suddenly she spoke, as if she were thinking aloud. “Your father was always almost too softhearted,” she said, as if admitting a truth grudgingly. “He was always too easy, I suppose, but”—she hesitated and then brought out her final words with a kind of exultant note in her voice—“but I’m glad he was that way! I’d rather have him that way than the other—hard and stingy and close, like some men.”

“Oh! So would I!” exclaimed Rilla with a sound of relief in her voice. “I’m glad Father was that way. I don’t mind being poor when it’s for a reason like that. I’m glad Father helped that man. Even if he did lose his house after all, I’m glad I had a father like that.”

“Here, too!” said Thurlow, whirling away from the window and giving his sister a radiant smile. “We’ll make out somehow. Don’t worry! The only thing that troubles me is that Mother will have to give up her home that Father planned for her.”

“Don’t worry about me!” said the mother with a deep breath and a brave smile shining through her tears. “I’m glad, too! Only Father would have been so troubled to have had this happen to us. But of course there didn’t seem to be a bit of risk at the time, he was doing so well, and the money was in the bank. So he wasn’t even to blame in his judgment. And we’ll just hold up our heads and smile. It isn’t going to be forever, of course, that we have to stay here on this earth, and while this lasts, we’ll take it smiling. We’re going home forever sometime and be in the Father’s house.