"Nothing, sir, except to thank you for giving me such a fair trial."
The words were spoken in a firmer voice than those which followed:
"The court, in consideration of your crime of murder in the first degree, sentences you to the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body, within the week beginning...."
When the appeal for a new trial was denied, it was Bob who informed Teddy. When all efforts to obtain Executive clemency had failed, it was Bob again who broke the news. When the boy requested that his mother and sisters should omit their next visit to Bitterwell—should wait till he sent them word before coming again—it was Bob who conveyed the request. Bitterwell, the great penitentiary, was twenty miles from Pemberton Heights, and through the winter they had gone to see him some thirty-odd times. They went in couples. Gladys and her mother, Jennie and Gussie, keeping each other company. The visits were less difficult than might have been expected because of Teddy's cheerfulness.
Of the request to wait before coming again, they didn't at first seize the significance. While frank with them about everything else, Bob had never given them the date of the week the judge had named, nor had they asked for it. If they did so ask, he meant to tell them; but they seemed to divine his intention.
Perhaps they divined the intention in this intimation from Teddy. At any rate, they didn't question it, or rebel against it. It followed on visits first of one pair and then of the other, both of which had been so normal as almost to pass as gay. That is, Teddy's spirits had infected theirs, and they had parted from him smiling. That of Jennie and Gussie had been the first of the two, and he had sent them off with a joke.
"My boy, I'm proud of you," had been Lizzie's farewell words to him. "Walk firmly, with your head erect, and never, never be sorry for anything you've done."
"Good old ma! The best ever! I sure am proud of you! What'll you bet that we don't have some good times together yet?"
A psychologist would have said that by suggestion and autosuggestion they strengthened each other and themselves; but whatever the process, the result was evident. Bob had given them the verb "to carry on," so that "carrying on" became at once an objective and a driving force. Gussie and Gladys went regularly to work; Jennie took care of the house and her mother. The latter task had become the more imperative, for the reason that, after Teddy's request that they should suspend their visits, she began to fail. It was not that she was hurt by it, but rather that she took it as a signal.