"Do you, mother, really? I wanted to ask you, but was almost afraid to, if he couldn't come here and have my room till he gets well. You see he's always treated Polly worse than he has me, and yet Polly risked his life for him. It isn't anywhere near so much to do as that, of course; but I'd like to give up my room to him, and nurse him when I was home, if you could look after him a little when I wasn't. I can sleep on the floor close to the bed, and be ready to wait on him nights. You know I always liked the floor better than a bed, anyway, and I believe he'll die if he stays where he is."
They knew each other so well, this mother and son, that a question of this kind was easily settled between them. Though both fully realized what a task they were undertaking, it was decided that if his parents would consent Bill Tooley should be brought to their house to be nursed.
When Monk Tooley came up from the mine that evening and examined the check-board to see how the numbers to his credit compared with the tally he had kept, he became very angry, and accused the check boss of cheating him. The latter said he knew nothing about it. There were the checks to speak for themselves. He had hung each one on the peg as it came up.
"Den dey've been stolen!" exclaimed the angry man, "an' if I catch him as done it, I'll make him smart for it, dat's all."
The check boss tried to show him how perfectly useless it would be for anybody to steal another's checks. "You know yourself it wouldn't do him any good, Tooley," he said. "He couldn't claim anything on 'em, or make any kind of a raise on 'em; besides I've been right here every minute of the day, barrin' a couple when I ran inside the breaker on an errand. Then I left Job Taskar, as honest a man as there is in the colliery, to keep watch, and he said nothing passed while I was gone."
"Well," answered Monk Tooley, "I'm cheated outer three loads, and you know what dat is ter a man what's worked overtime ter make 'em, an' has sickness and doctor's bills at home. But I'll catch de thief yet, an' when I do he'll wish he'd never know'd what a check was."
As he was walking down the street after supper, smoking a pipe and thinking of his sick boy, who seemed to have grown worse since morning, and of his lost checks, Monk Tooley was accosted by Derrick Sterling, who said,
"Good-evening, Mr. Tooley. How's Bill this evening?"
"None de better fer your askin'," was the surly answer, for the man felt very bitter against Derrick, to whom he attributed all his son's trouble.
"I'm sorry to hear that he isn't any better," continued the boy, determined not to be easily rebuffed.