“I don’t care if I am ill!”
Mrs. Carter was desperate; she had eaten nothing, and her head ached from weeping. “I don’t care for anything but my boy—my Leigh! To think of it—while I was making him a cherry pie, too!” she climaxed with more tears.
Emily caught hold of her, sobbing, too. She had eaten most of the pie, and it touched her to the quick to think of Leigh, pieless and in jail.
“Oh, mama, come up-stairs; it’s going on eleven o’clock!”
Between them, Daniel and Emily got the weeping woman up-stairs. Daniel closed the door on the scene as Emily made her sit down on the side of the bed and snuff lavender salts.
“Your nose is awfully red, mama,” she said feelingly. “It’ll make your head ache worse. Mine aches dreadfully!”
Daniel went softly down to the library, aware of William’s ceaseless march on the back porch. He found his father sitting quietly in the oldest cane-bottom chair, his stockinged feet thrust out in front of him and his hands in his pockets. He had never known his father to sit upright in a hard chair before.
Daniel went wearily over to his mother’s rocker and sank into it, passing his hand over his eyes. He rather dreaded a long talk, now that the tension had snapped; but his father was not inclined to talk, and only asked a question.
“Think they’ll take bail to-morrow?”
Daniel shook his head.