“I’m afraid it’s the end, Tish,” she whimpered.
“It is the end,” Tish said shortly, “or it will be unless somebody holds me.”
It was that evening that Will took Tish to a window and pointed out the lot he had selected in the cemetery across the road.
“It has a good view, you see, Letitia,” he told her. “And her sainted mother lies there too. There is room for me beside her also. I shan’t outlive her very long.”
“No,” Tish said dryly, “I imagine you’ll not outlive Emmie, Will; not to amount to anything anyhow.”
We had a long talk with Will that night. We had dusted the living room and started a fire there, and he seemed to relax. He even lighted a cigarette, after Tish had told him that if he sat near the fire the smoke would go up the chimney.
Emmie, it seemed, didn’t like tobacco smoke.
“It affects her heart,” he said. “I smoke outside, and then come in and change my coat. The faintest odor sickens her.”
The trouble, he said, had been coming on for some years.
“We’d been talking about getting a car,” he said, “and I didn’t feel able to. I remember she had just said she wasn’t as well as she might be, and that she needed a car for fresh air; and when I said that I couldn’t afford it she fell over just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “In a heap. That was the beginning.”