"I feel all right, a little tired, but I'm perfectly well. Papa had a pretty hard day—sometimes I think he knows he'll never get about again and it frightens him. He—doesn't want to be left alone with mamma. She fusses him and he gets all nervous and worn out."
"Can't they get some one?"
"No. They couldn't pay any one. The pension isn't straightened yet. They're taking up a collection, but a couple of hundred will be a miracle, and how long does that last in illness? Besides, mamma is such a bad manager."
"You're not responsible for that. And how about me?"
"You're a wonderful manager."
"I'm not."
"Then you ought to learn," Anne tried to tease. "It's really my duty to stay away until you do. A great, big, social revolutionist able to reorganize the world, needing one small wife to look out for him!"
"It's beastly eating at restaurants, and that hill's the stillest place in the world at night. It's like lighting up a tomb to go home and not hear you or Rogie."
Anne thought of the old man in the other room, eating his soft, childish foods, alone with the empty past and death.
"I can't leave them, Roger, not yet. The doctor says that in a few weeks he may be able to get into a wheel-chair, and then he can come out here. That will be some change."