“Why, what is the matter? Don't you want to be got up?” asked Charlotte.
“Yes,” said Barney, miserably.
“What is the matter?” Charlotte said, bending over him. “Don't you feel well enough?”
Barney gave her a pitiful, shamed look like a child. “You'll go, then,” he half sobbed.
Charlotte turned away quickly. “I shall not go as long as you need me, Barney,” she said, with a patient dignity.
Barney did not dream against what odds Charlotte had stayed with him. Her mother had come repeatedly, and expostulated with her out in the entry when she went away.
“It ain't fit for you to stay here, as if you was married to him, when you ain't, and ain't ever goin' to be, as near as I can make out,” she said. “William can get that woman over to the North Village now, or I can come, or your aunt Hannah would come for a while, till Rebecca gets well enough to see to him a little. She was sayin' yesterday that it wa'n't fit for you to stay here.”
“I'm here, and I'm going to stay here till he's better than he is now,” said Charlotte.
“Folks will talk.”
“I can't help it if they do. I'm doing what I think is right.”