"How about thinkin' for once what somebody else wants, young man?" Susan caught her breath again, and glanced furtively at the half-averted face on the pillow. Then doggedly she went on. "Maybe you think I hain't got anything to do but trespass up an' down them stairs all day waitin' on you, when you are perfectly capacious of waitin' on yourself SOME."
"Why, SUSAN!" There was incredulous, hurt amazement in the boy's voice; but Susan was visibly steeling herself against it.
"What do you think?—that I'm loafin' all day, an' your aunt gone now, an' me with it all on my hands?" she demanded, her stony gaze carefully turned away from the white face on the pillow. "An' to have to keep runnin' up here all the mornin' when I've got to do the dishes, an' bake bread, an' make soap, an'—"
"If you'll get my clothes, Susan, I'll get up," said Keith very quietly from the bed.
And Susan, not daring to unclose her lips, wrested the garments from the hooks, dropped them on to the chair by the bed, and fled from the room. But she had not reached the hall below when the sobs shook her frame.
"An' me talkin' like that when I'd be willin' to walk all day on my hands an' knees, if't would help him one little minute," she choked.
Barely had Susan whipped herself into presentable shape again when Keith's voice at the kitchen door caused her to face about with a startled cry.
"I'm downstairs, Susan." The boy's voice challenged hers for coldness now. "I'll take my meals down here, after this."
"Why, Keith, however in the world did you—" Then Susan pulled herself up. "Good boy, Keith! That WILL make it lots easier," she said cheerfully, impersonally, turning away and making a great clatter of pans in the sink.
But later, at least once every half-hour through that long forenoon, Susan crept softly through the side hall to the half-open living-room door, where she could watch Keith. She watched him get up and move slowly along the side of the room, picking his way. She watched him pause and move hesitating fingers down the backs of the chairs that he encountered. But when she saw him stop and finger the books on the little table by the window, she crept back to her kitchen—and rattled still more loudly the pots and pans in the sink.