"Jimmie!" she shrieked.
A boy's voice answered, "What ye want, maw?"
"Jimmie, you hustle into your clothes and run down the street to Doctor Sill's office and tell him to come up here right away. Hurry now!"
Closing the door behind her, she started resolutely up the stairway, and her action gave Victor a grateful sense of relief.
"What do you think ailed her?" she asked.
"I don't know. She seemed all right last night when I went to bed."
This woman, young in years, was old in experience, that was evident, for she proceeded unhesitatingly to the silent bedside with that courage to meet death which seems native to all women. She, too, listened and felt for signs of life and found none. "I reckon you're right," she said, quietly. "She's cold as a stone."
At her words the strong young fellow gave way. He turned his face to the wall, sobbing, tortured by the thought that his bitter and savage assault and expressed resolve to leave her had been the cause of his mother's death. "What can I do?" he asked, when he was able to speak. "I must do something—she was so good to me."
The young woman, looking upon him with large tolerance and a certain measure of admiration, replied: "There's nothing to do now but wait for the doctor. You'd better come down with me and have some coffee."
He did not feel in the least like eating or drinking, but he needed human companionship. Therefore he followed his neighbor down the stairs and into her cluttered little living-room with submissive gratitude. The home was slovenly, but it was glorified by kindliness. A tousled baby of eighteen months was keeping the old man busy and a small boy of eight or nine was struggling into his knickerbockers, and Victor, thrust into the midst of this hearty, dirty, noisy household, remembered with increasing respect his mother's dainty housekeeping. "She was a lady," he said to himself, in definition of the difference between her apartment and this. "Her home was poor, but it was never ratty."