"Yes, with your sister," urged Susan. "I don't mean because she's so haughty an' impious. I can stand that. It's about Keith I'm talkin' about. Mr. Burton, Keith won't never get well, never, so's he can have that operator on his eyes, unless he takes some exercise an' gets his strength back. The nurse an' the doctor—they both said he wouldn't."
"Yes, yes, I know, Susan," fumed the man impatiently, beginning to pace up and down the room. "And that's just what we're trying to do—get his strength back."
"But he ain't—he won't—he can't," choked Susan feverishly. "Mr. Burton, I KNOW you don't want to talk about it, but you've got to. I'm all Keith's got to look out for him." The father of Keith gave an inarticulate gasp, but Susan plunged on unheeding. "An' he'll never get well if he ain't let to get up an' stand an' walk an' eat an' sit down himself. But Mis' Colebrook won't let him. She won't let him do anything. She keeps sayin', 'Don't do it, oh, don't do it,' all the time,—when she ought to say, 'Do it, do it, do it!' Mr. Burton, cryin' an' wringin' your hands an' moanin', 'Oh, Keithie, darling!' won't make a boy grow red blood an' make you feel so fine you want to knock a man down! Mr. Burton, I want you to tell that woman to let me take care of that boy for jest one week—ONE WEEK, an' her not to come near him with her snivelin' an'—"
But Daniel Burton, with two hands upflung, and a head that ducked as if before an oncoming blow, had rushed from the room. For the second time that day Daniel Burton had fled—to the attic.
CHAPTER XI
NOT PATS BUT SCRATCHES
Mrs. Colebrook went home the next day. She wore the air of an injured martyr at breakfast. She told her brother that, of course, if he preferred to have an ignorant servant girl take care of his poor afflicted son, she had nothing to say; but that certainly he could not expect HER to stay, too, especially after being insulted as she had been.
Daniel Burton had remonstrated feebly, shrugged his shoulders and flung his arms about in his usual gestures of impotent annoyance.
Susan, in the kitchen, went doggedly about her work, singing, meanwhile, what Keith called her "mad" song. When Susan was particularly "worked up" over something, "jest b'ilin' inside" as she expressed it, she always sang this song—her own composition, to the tune of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home":
"I've taken my worries, an' taken my woes,
I have, I have,
An' shut 'em up where nobody knows,
I have, I have.
I chucked 'em down, that's what I did,
An' now I'm sittin' upon the lid,
An' we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marchin' home.
I'm sittin' upon the lid, I am,
Hurrah! Hurrah!