“I brought her some flowers,” he said. “I got to thinking while I was away. Maybe I could have done a lot of things to make her happy, but I’ve been too selfish to think of them. Well——”
Aggie watched him go out. She still had her hay fever, and standing at the window for three nights had not improved it.
“What I dod’t udderstad, Lizzie,” she said, “is why there are so bady healthy wobed in the world. The bed seeb to like theb feeble.”
And just then Tish, on her way downstairs for the tray, met Will face to face. She never even spoke to him. She gave him one awful look, and then, just as she was, she went out of the house. She did not come back for the most terrible five hours of my life.
Now and then, in a nightmare, I hear Will carrying that box of flowers up the stairs and opening the door which Tish had forgotten to lock. And then I hear him give a groan and drop the box, and then come staggering down again like a madman, shaking both his fists at us and shouting at the top of his lungs.
“She’s gone!” he yelled. “You’ve lied to me! She’s dead! Oh, my poor Emmie, and I left you to die alone!”
“Nonsense!” I shouted back at him. “Your poor Emmie’s all right. She’s been eating enough for ten people right along!”
He stopped wailing and looked at me.
“Then where is she?” he demanded.
“She’s right up in her room in bed. You don’t see her frying herself over this cookstove, do you?” He caught me by the shoulder. “Have you moved her?” he shouted. “Have you taken my precious girl out of the room where she has lain helpless so long, and put her somewhere else? Have you dared——”