But he only put his foot under his chair and went on about his troubles.
“I don’t like asking for help,” he said, “but every time I get a little money it goes to doctors and nurses. I’ve paid a nurse forty dollars a week for seven years and I’ve been needing a new suit for the last six of them. And we can’t keep help. There’s nobody there now but the nurse. Seems as though the feebler Emmie gets the worse they treat her.”
Well, he looked so forlorn that Tish sent Aggie out for some blackberry cordial.
“Is she in bed all the time?” she asked.
“She’s up and down. I carry her down to the living room once in a while, but I can’t do it often. I’m not so strong as I used to be.”
“Still, as thin as she must be——”
“Well, she isn’t exactly thin,” he said in an embarrassed manner. “It’s a funny thing, but she’s put on weight. Of course, weight itself may be a disease. I guess it is with her, anyhow.”
Tish glanced at him, but he was drinking his blackberry cordial and didn’t notice it. He was certainly shabby, and his face had sort of fallen in.
“What’s the matter with your teeth?” Tish said suddenly.
“I’ve lost one or two of them,” he admitted. “I haven’t liked to take the time away from her to get them looked at. You see”—he looked away from us, out of the window—“you see, I may not have her long. I don’t want ever to feel that I—that I failed her in any way.”