"Griselda has too much to do as it is," she gulps and the tears start to her hot eyes. I have isolated her and Jimmie in my room, and Randolph and Laura are cautioned to keep as far as possible away from them. I remember the time when I would have flown from the fear of infection as from the plague, but now my anxieties are of a wholly different nature. Jimmie is mending now, but Alicia is far more ill than she knows.
Griselda has undertaken the stockings and at night, when I sit watching and waiting for sounds from either of my invalids, I operate upon the buttons. It is curious how much art enters into the sewing of a button. A dog of a bachelor though I have ever been, I have never been compelled to learn that handicraft before. But I have learned from Griselda, who smiled crookedly when she imparted the law, that if you twist the thread around several times after you have sewn it, the whole thing acquires, relatively, the strength of a cable. To your punctured fingers you attend afterwards.
Alicia, awakening at midnight, sat up in bed and caught me at my task; she moaned most dolefully. I hastily put Jimmie's little "undies" behind me, but too late.
"You'll never want me—or need me again—what's the use of getting well?" she wailed weakly.
"Oh, yes, I shall, Alicia—more than ever," I hastened to assure her.
"You do everything now that I ought to do," she pressed with febrile insistence. "I shall be no use any more."
"But don't you see, Alicia," I argued, touching her hot forehead, "that I shall have to be earning money while you are doing the buttons? I ought to be earning it now, so get well as quickly as you can. Jimmie sees it; he's much better already." That logic seemed to soothe her more than I had expected. She caught my hand impulsively and pressed it to her cheek. The tremendous part played by affection in the lives of children is a never-ceasing wonder to me.
Alicia is convalescent again, laus Domini, and Jimmie is now running about the little house filling it with noise—which is music to my ears. Laura and Randolph have fortunately thus far escaped infection. Jimmie is wanting to resume "wolling up and down" the slope again, but this is still verboten.
I can now take up my journeys into town again and I note with a pang that I am growing shabby. The yearly purchases of clothes had been as regular with me as my meals, but I have ordered no clothes for the spring or summer. Odd, what a deleterious effect the shabbiness of clothes has upon one's consciousness! The tinge of inferiority it brings touches some very tender places in one's spirit, almost like a shabby conscience. But the doctor of the neighborhood, a contemplative fellow who obviously knows his business, though he talks of his laboratory and his experiments like an alchemist, has earned the clothes that I must do without. And of the two I needed them more.
My search is ended. There is jubilation in my heart again. I have fallen into a livelihood; like the bricklayer who used to fare forth, dinner pail in hand, I have found work.