“And it’s gone on ever since?”
“Yes. She just wouldn’t take care of herself. And I didn’t understand. I used to ask her to do things. The second attack came when I asked her to wash out a pair of golf hose for me. The laundress always shrunk them, and I thought—well, she took cold, and it settled on her lungs. Every now and then she has a hemorrhage.”
“A large one?” Tish asked.
“I’ve never been around when she’s had one, but they weaken her terribly,” he said. “The worst thing about it all is I’m responsible. I never did realize just how delicate she was until it was too late.”
We sat there for a while, and he seemed glad to talk and be warm at the same time. But after a while the nurse tiptoed in and whispered that Emmie wanted him, and he slipped out and creaked up the stairs.
“I always read to her in the evenings,” he explained as he left. “It’s the least I can do, and it’s all she has.”
Tish was very thoughtful that evening, and after Will had read to Emmie until she was sleepy, and tucked her up and fixed her window and taken her ice water and moved her bell closer to her and given her an eggnog, which was all, he said, she could keep down, he locked up the house and we went to bed.
“Don’t worry if you hear me moving about in the night,” he said. “The nurse has to sleep sometime.”
“And when do you sleep?” Tish inquired.
“Oh, I get a nap now and then, and then I sleep in the train going up to business in the morning and coming back in the evening.”