As Tish says, the Emmies of this world never fool the women, although they always fool the men. But Emmie knew well enough that she had not fooled us for a minute. And the way she hated us after the affair of the cold pack was simply wicked. She would lie in bed and loathe the very ground we walked on, and when she found it would take at least a week to repair the car she had a convulsion and frothed at the mouth. Tish was quite certain the froth was merely lather from a cake of soap, but Will was almost out of his mind.
The strangest thing, however, was the way she had turned against Miss Smith. Possibly the fact that Tish found a picture of her in Will’s coat one day while she was repairing it in Emmie’s room had something to do with it. But both Will and Miss Smith were as puzzled as could be about it, and Miss Smith said it had been on her bureau when she went out.
Will went right down on his knees beside Emmie’s bed and swore he had always been true to her.
“There has never been any other woman in my life, Emmie,” he told her. “I’ve never had any time for that sort of thing, and you know it. Surely you can trust me!”
“I trust nobody,” said Emmie grimly. “If you haven’t the decency to wait until I am gone, which at the best is a matter of weeks, I can but lie here and await the end.”
But she couldn’t very well send the nurse away, for in ten years she had had most of the nurses thereabouts, and none of them would come back, and she knew it. She was very suspicious after that, however, and the very next day, Aggie happening to dust baking soda instead of powdered sugar over her cup custard—yes, she was eating a little by that time; she had to, or starve—she accused Miss Smith of trying to poison her.
Naturally, things were considerably strained from then on, although both Will and the dog were showing marked improvement. Will would come home to a clean house and a good dinner and smoke a couple of cigarettes up the chimney afterward. Then he would get up heavily and draw a long breath and say:
“Well, I suppose I’d better be getting on the job again,” and go slowly up the stairs.
But long after he should have been in his bed, getting the rest he needed, we could hear him reading aloud, on and on, until Emmie went to sleep.
How long this might have continued I cannot say. But one morning we missed the half of a coconut cake from the kitchen cupboard, and Tish promptly went to Will about it.