"I picked it up and got drunk on it, there's nothing else. It was a pretty hard drunk, but before I got through you came in and dragged me home. Twenty cents were left in my pockets. Mother found the money and bought a fish for breakfast.
"Well, I did that much good at least," observed Ordway with a smile, "have you finished, Kit?"
"It's been on my mind," repeated Kit deliriously, "and I wanted to get it off."
"It's off now, my boy," said Ordway, picking up the ragged quilt from the floor and laying it across the other's feet, "and on the whole I'm glad you told me. You've done the straight thing, Kit, and I am proud of you."
"Proud of me?" repeated Kit, and fell to crying like a baby.
In a minute he grew delirious again, and Ordway, after bathing the boy's face and hands from a basin of water on a chair at the bedside, went into the kitchen in search of Mrs. Berry, whom he found weeping over a pair of baby's knitted shoes. The pathos of her grief bordered so closely upon the ridiculous that while he watched her he forced back the laugh upon his lips.
"Kit is worse again," he said. "Do you give him any medicine?"
Mrs. Berry struggled with difficulty to her feet, while her sobs changed into a low whimpering sound.
"Did you sit up with him last night?" asked Ordway, following her to the door.
"I've been up for three nights, sir. He has to have his face and hands bathed every hour."