Mrs. Scrimser, when they were alone, held her grandson fast for a minute saying only: "Vanny boy, Mapledale Avenue's been like the grave since you went away," and he felt the contagion of her tenderness and a great longing to lay his cares in those capacious arms. She asked about Laura Lou, and why Vance hadn't brought her the night before, or today; and when he said she was ill in bed, exclaimed reproachfully at his not telling her sooner, and said she would go straight down to Mrs. Hubbard's after lunch. She began to question Vance about how they lived, and whether Laura Lou was comfortable and well looked after, and if the food was nourishing, and he was satisfied with the doctor; and gradually he was drawn into confessing his financial difficulties, and the impossibility of giving his wife such a home as she ought to have. Mrs. Scrimser's ideas of money were even vaguer than her grandson's, but her sympathy was the more ardent because she could not understand why a successful novelist, who knew all the publishers and critics in New York, shouldn't be making a big income. She was indignant at such injustice; but she implored Vance not to worry, since the "Storecraft" offer would enable her to help him and Laura Lou as soon as she'd paid back what she owed his father. From her confused explanations Vance gathered that Mr. Scrimser's long illness, and his widow's unlimited hospitality, had been a heavy strain on Mr. Weston, who, besides having to support his family-in-law, had been crippled by one or two unlucky gambles in real estate. Vance guessed that Mrs. Scrimser's attention had finally been called to these facts (no doubt by his mother), and that in a tardy rush of self-reproach she had resolved to wipe out her debt. It was not religious zeal alone which had started her on her lecturing tour. In the West, she told Vance, she had spoken without pay; but now that she understood her pecuniary obligations she was impatient to make money by her lectures. No one was more scrupulously anxious not to be a burden on others; the difficulty was that for her, to whom no fellow creature could ever be a burden, it was an effort to remember that she might be one herself. Vance was moved by the candour and humility of her avowal. He too knew what it felt like to be dragged down from the empyrean just as the gates of light were swinging open; how happy it would have made him to relieve this old dreamer of her cares, and leave her to pursue her vision! "I daresay when she came here she thought I'd be able to help her out," he reflected bitterly, and regretted that he had mentioned his own troubles. But Mrs. Scrimser's optimism was irrepressible; already she was planning, with the proceeds of her tour, to hire a little house in Euphoria and take Vance and Laura Lou to live with her. "Saidie Toler'll take all the housekeeping bothers off our hands, and you can do your writing, and I'll go on speaking in public if God's got any more use for me; and in the good clean prairie air Laura Lou'll get all the poison of New York out of her in no time." Her face was as radiant as if she were enumerating the foundations of the Heavenly City.