"Shall we stop here a little while, Hal dear, to talk, or will we go on slowly toward home? I've been thinking, up—up there beside mother, and I've found a way, I hope."
"I don't care where, though I'd rather not talk. What good does it do? I hate it. I hate home. I hate this place worse—Oh, it's wicked! It's cruel! Why did she ever have to leave Fairacres! She might be—"
Amy's hand went up to Hallam's lips. "Hush! Do you suppose God blunders? I don't. If He had meant her to stay with us, He would have found a way to cure her. To think otherwise is torture. No. No, no, indeed no! Father is left and so are we. We have got to live and take care of him and of ourselves."
"I should like to know how. I—a miserable good-for-naught, and you—a girl."
"Exactly, thank you, just a girl. But a girl who loves her brother and her father all the more because—she loved them too. A girl who has made up her mind to do the first thing and everything that offers, which will help to make them comfortable; who is going to put her family pride in her pocket and go to work. There, it's out!"
"Go—out—to—work, Amy—Kaye!"
"Yes, indeed. Don't take it so hard, dear."
In spite of himself he smiled. Then he remembered. "I don't see how you can laugh or jest—so soon. As if—but you must care."
"Just because I do care, so very, very much. Oh, Hal, don't dream I'm not missing her every hour of the day. I fancy I hear her saying now, this moment, as she used to say when I'd been naughty and was penitent: 'If thee loves me so much, dear, thee will try to do the things I like.' The one thing she liked, she lived, was a brave helpfulness toward everybody she knew. She didn't wait for great things, she did little things. Now, the first little things that are facing us are: the earning of our rent and of our food."
Hallam said nothing. He knocked a stone aside with the end of his crutch, and groaned.