Now, Helen Brewster was jealous without reason, and perhaps the unreasonable phase of that disease runs its most violent course. The Brewsters lived on the ground floor of an old-fashioned town house. In the family living on the upper floor was a daughter, Mary Crimmins, who caused Helen’s worst paroxysms. In Winter, after an unusually hard storm, the old roof was endangered by its load of snow. Mary Crimmins called from her window to Frank as the only man then in the house to mount the roof and shovel away the snow. And Helen, washing dinner dishes at the sink, saw the two talking, Frank looking up and smiling, and immediately concluded that the topic was much warmer than snow. Frank got a ladder and a shovel, and mounted to the roof, while poor Helen sat in the sitting-room bathing her soul in misery, for while men do not usually present a ladder when planning an elopement in broad daylight, all things were possible to her distorted mind. Soon there came a small avalanche of snow from the roof, but the distracted deaf woman did not hear it. Then her son came rushing into the room, screaming with such breath as was left in him:
“Oh, ma! It’s terrible!”
“What’s the matter?”
“The snow all slipped and knocked the ladder down, and pa—”
“What about pa?”
“He’s up there hugging—”
Johnnie really finished his sentence, but the words “pa” and “hugging” were enough for Helen.
“He is, is he? I’ll attend to him!” And she rushed upstairs and knocked loudly at the door; then, without waiting for any invitation, she strode in. Old Mrs. Crimmins sat knitting by the window, while in a corner behind her sat Mary with a stranger, a fine-looking young man. Before the irate deaf woman could properly unload her mind, Mary blushing red, came and screamed in her neighbor’s ear:
“This is my fiance, Henry Jordon. We meant to keep it secret, and you are the first one I’ve told. I know you won’t repeat it.”
“But where’s Frank?” the astonished Helen at last managed to say. Johnnie had followed her upstairs, and he was well drilled in handling the deaf. So he caught hold of his mother’s dress and pulled her to the door.