“That poor wife of his! What has she ever done to deserve such a tragic life!” cried young Mrs. Willing pityingly.
“For the Lord’s sake, what’s going to keep them from being dependent on public charity?” thought Jerome, apprehensively.
He sent up to the house with a tactfully worded letter a check for a hundred dollars, saying he thought the store was under a real obligation to its faithful employee of long standing. “But,” he thought, “you can’t keep that sort of help up forever.”
“I needn’t have worried!” he told himself the next morning, when he found his check returned with a short, well-written expression of thanks, but of unwillingness to accept help which could only be temporary. “We shall have to manage, somehow, sooner or later,” the letter ran. It was signed Evangeline Knapp. “What a fool name, Evangeline!” thought the young merchant, somewhat nettled by the episode.
After this he was away on a buying expedition that lasted longer than he intended, and when he came home they had a set-to with leaking steam-pipes in the store. He thought nothing more of the Knapps till, meeting Dr. Merritt on the street, he remembered to ask for news. Knapp was better now, he heard, suffering less atrociously, with periods of several hours of relative quiet. There had been no actual fracture of the spinal bones, but the spinal cord seemed affected, probably serious effusion of blood within the spinal canal, with terrible nervous shock.
How doctors do run on about their cases if you get them started! Mr. Willing cut short any more of this sort of medical lingo by asking to be told in plain terms if the man would ever walk again.
“Probably not,” said Dr. Merritt, “though he will reach the wheel-chair stage and perhaps even crutches. Still, you never can be sure.... But he is not a robust man, you know. I told you about his obstinate dyspepsia. I never saw a worse case.”
Mr. Willing’s healthy satisfied face expressed the silent disgust of a strong, successful man for a weak and unsuccessful one. “What in hell are they going to do?” he inquired. He added, blamingly, “Three children! Lord!”
Dr. Merritt found nothing to answer and went on, looking grave. He had helped all three children into the world, had worn himself out over the two older ones in their constantly recurring maladies, and felt for them the tenderness and affection we have for those who have given us much anxiety.