"He helped me buy a parlour organ," said a thin woman a little apart from the group. "I come to him, and I sez, 'I'd go hungry to get a organ, what I could pick out tunes on, an' mebbe learn to play "Home, Sweet Home" on.' He sez, 'Well, well!' (yuh know his way) an' then I told him how I'd wanted one, an' saved up, and then had to use that there money to bury pop (his insurance havin' ran out) an' he helped me. I got it. I kin play three measures a 'Home, Sweet Home,' real good, except fer being slow in the bass.... There ain't nothing like music fer company. I don't get lonely no more of evenings. I use to get that down, an' tired a settin' alone after work, that I'd hate to hear the six a'clock whistles. It ain't no joke, settin' in one room with the wall paper all off. I wonder how he is?" she ended in another voice. No one answered. The woman near the radiator coughed, then wiped her eyes. The old man twirled his hat.
A girl with a sullen look slunk in, and settled near the door. There was quiet. Once in a while a chair was moved, and grated on the floor. The radiator clanked. There was the staccato tap of heels in the upper hall, then on the stairs.
"You ask her," said one woman to another.
The old man spoke. "Mrs.," he said, "how is he?"
"There ain't no change," said Mrs. Fry, "and there ain't no sense to your settin' here."
"We'll be quiet," said the old man wistfully, "and we'd kinda like to. We all love him."
Mrs. Fry covered her face with her handkerchief. "Set if yuh want to," she said in what was, for her, a softened tone, "but there ain't a bit a sense to it." Then she turned and went down the hall, blowing her nose loudly.
"There's three doctors," said a girl just out of childhood, and yet from her place in life old looking.
"I know that," replied the thin woman. "It looks bad fer him, but he can't die! There ain't another!"
"He won't die!" said the old man. "Fer them that knowed him, he'll always live."