“Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards,” quoted Mrs. Wopp. “We’ve had sich a time, but I’m shore our li’l Mornin’-Glory is gittin’ better now.” She gazed at the child with true maternal affection. “She’s lookin’ kinder peart agin.”
“Glory must git better, nothin’s no fun no more,” blurted Moses.
“Betty’s not goin’ to no kingdom come yet,” assured Mrs. Wopp, her optimism rising like a star of the first magnitude to lighten the darkness of her son’s midnight sky.
“There’s no mention of circus-ladies going there anyway,” said Howard, smiling. This reference to her attempts to out-barnum Barnum brought a bright smile to the wan face of Betty.
“Don’t stan’ there fillin’ the doorway like a bung in a barrel, Moses,” reprimanded Mrs. Wopp. “That boy’s gone clean petrified. Go an’ fetch the lamp, it air giftin’ so dark I can’t tell which is Glory an’ which is Miss Gordon.”
As Moses clattered down stairs, Mrs. Wopp continued, “There is shore a thunderstorm comin’ up to-night. ’Pears to me I heerd like a roll of drums.”
A dull yellow glow from the kerosene lamp, placed by Moses on the bureau, lighted up the figure of Betty reclining on snowy pillows. On one side of her was seated Howard, his arm about the drowsy child. On the side of the bed, squarely seated on one of Mrs. Wopp’s texts worked into the patchwork quilt, was Nell, watching the little pallid face and trying to avoid the eyes of her silent lover.
“Been talkin’ to a grave-digger?” queried Mrs. Wopp, of her offspring, as Moses selected a comfortable seat, his sober face still bearing traces of the last few days’ anxiety. She looked on the solicitude of Moses with an approving eye, but it was necessary, however, to hide her maternal pride by a series of assaults upon him on every possible pretext. Her banterings also helped to keep her son and heir in the spotlight.
“There’s Mose allers ready fer a sitdown, a sort of kerlapsible verlise.”
During Betty’s illness these one-sided dialogues were more than usually plentiful. In this way only was Mrs. Wopp able to alleviate the “gnawin’ at her heart-strings” as she said, at having Betty so ill. It also kept the boy alive to the fact that life’s path was not strewn with “cabbage roses.” Such, at least, were the confidences poured into the sympathetic ear of his pinto.