"Don't you want I should do somethin'? I should think she'd have to be lifted."
"No," said Stella, quite blithely, "I can do all there is to do. Good-night."
The window closed and he went away. Stella ran downstairs to the bedroom where aunt Hill sat beside her mother, fanning the invalid with a palm-leaf fan. Mrs. Joyce hated to be fanned in wintry weather, but aunt Hill acted upon the theory that sick folks needed air. Aunt Hill was very large, and she creaked as she breathed, because, when she was visiting, even in the country, she put on her black silk of an afternoon. She had thick black hair, smooth under a fictitious gloss, and done in a way to be seen now only in daguerreotypes of long ago, and her dull black eyes were masterful. Mrs. Joyce, gazing miserably up at her daughter, was a shred of a thing in contrast, and Stella at once felt a passionate pity for her.
"There, aunt Hill," she said daringly, "I wouldn't fan mother any more if I's you. Let me see if I can get at you, mother. I'm goin' to rub your back."
Aunt Hill, with a quiver of professional pride wounded to the quick, did lay down the fan on a stand at her elbow. She was listening.
"Where's Jerry?" she demanded. "I don't hear nobody in the fore-room."
Stella was manipulating her mother with a brisk yet tender touch.
"Oh," she said, "I told him he'd have to poke along back to-night. I wanted to rub mother 'fore she got sleepy."
"Now you needn't ha' done that," said Mrs. Joyce from a deep seclusion, her face turned downward into the pillow. "He must be awful disappointed, dressin' himself up an' all, an' 'pearin' out for nothin'."
"Well," said Stella, "there's more Saturday nights comin'."