"Well, I'm glad yer sorry, an' wish yer was sorrier."
This did not seem to promise a very pleasant conversation, but Derrick persevered, saying,
"It must be very hard for Mrs. Tooley to keep so many children quiet, and I believe the doctor said Bill must not be troubled by noise, didn't he?"
"Yes, an' if ye'd muzzle yer own mouth de whole place would be quieter."
"My mother wanted me to say to you that if you'd like to send Bill over to our house for a few days, it's so quiet over there that she thought it would do him good, and she'd be very glad to have him," said Derrick, plunging boldly into the business he had undertaken to manage.
"Tell yer mother ter mind her own brats an' leave me ter mind mine, den de road'll be wide enough for de both of us," was the ungracious answer made by the surly miner to this offer, as he turned away and left Derrick standing angry and mortified behind him.
"That comes of trying to do unto others as you would have others do unto you," he muttered to himself. "Seems to me the best way is to do unto others as they do unto you, and then nobody can complain. I declare if I had as ugly a temper as that man has I'd go and drown myself. I don't believe he's got one spark of human feeling in him."
Monk Tooley was not quite so bad as Derrick thought him, but just at that time everything seemed to go wrong with him, and he was like some savage animal suffering from a pain for which it can find no relief. He began to repent of his ugliness to Derrick almost as soon as the latter had left him, saying to himself, "Maybe de lad meant kindly arter all."
Going back to his untidy, noisy home, he entered the house, and standing by his son's bedside gazed curiously at him. The boy was evidently growing worse each minute, as even the unpractised eye of the miner could see. He was tossing in a high fever, calling constantly for the water which in her ignorance his mother would not give him, nor did he appear to recognize any of those who stood near.
"I fear me his time's come," said one of the neighbor women, several of whom, attracted by curiosity, came and went in and out of the house.