A chair squealed on its castors, a patch of light sprang through the transom, and the chocolate-ocher bedroom and its chocolate-ocher furniture emerged into a chocolate-ocher half-light.
"Jimmie?"
"Huh?"
"I'm—I wish—Oh, nothin'!"
"Ain't you feelin' right, in there, ma?"
"Yes, Jimmie; but—but come in and talk to your old mother awhile, my boy."
"Surest thing you know! Say, these are some sandwiches! You must 'a' struck pay-dirt in your sardine-mine, ma."
"They're for her gen'l'man friend, Jimmie."
The door flung open and threw an island of light pat on the bed. In the gauzy stream the face on the pillow, with the skin drawn over the cheeks tight as a vellum on a snare-drum, was vague as a head by Carriere after he had begun to paint through the sad film of his growing blindness.
"Jimmie, my boy!"