Mr. Simcox died.
There's no use labouring why the emotions that at this loss should
have been hers were not hers. That girl whose eyes had gathered
tears at the picture of the little figure with flapping jacket
peering through the curtains at the postman's "rat-tat-flick" was
not present in the woman whose first thought at the sudden news,
brought to her seated in her office, was, "At such a time! Just
when--Now what is to be done?" True for her that there followed
gentle feelings, and gentler yet in her attendance on her patron's
obsequies, in the discovery that all of which he died possessed
he'd left to her, but it is the duller surfaces that are slowest
to give refraction, the least used springs that are least pliant.
She was come a long road from her first signs of hardening. She was
past, now, the stage where, when grieving for the little old man,
she would have felt contrition that her first thought at his death
had been, not of him, but of his death's effect upon her work.
And there supervened, immediately, interests that caused the passing
of Mr. Simcox merely--to have passed.
Mr. Sturgiss, of Field and Company, attending the funeral with her,
said to her as he was taking his leave, "One would say this isn't
a moment to be talking of other things, business things, but after
all--In a way it is the moment. You'll be making new arrangements
and rearrangements now. Before you start settling anything I want
you to have in mind the old proposition.
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