Mrs. Barner did not live to see the whole work of degeneration, for the end came in the early spring, swift and sudden and kind.
The doctor's grief for his wife was sincere. He always referred to her as "my poor Mildred," and never spoke of her except when comparatively sober.
Mary Barner took up the burden of caring for her father without question, for she loved him with a great and pitying love, to which he responded in his best moments. In the winter she went with him on his drives night and day, for the fear of what might happen was always in her heart. She was his housekeeper, his office-girl, his bookkeeper; she endured all things, loneliness, poverty, disgrace, without complaining or bitterness.
One day shortly after Mrs. Barner's death big John Robertson from "the hills" drove furiously down the street to the doctor's house, and rushed into the office without ringing the bell. His little boy had been cut with the mower-knives, and he implored the doctor to come at once.
The doctor sat at his desk, just drunk enough to be ugly-tempered, and curtly told Mr. Robertson to go straight to perdition, and as the poor man, wild with excitement, begged him to come and offered him money, he yawned nonchalantly, and with some slight variations repeated the injunction.
Mary hearing the conversation came in hurriedly.
"Mary, my dear," the doctor said, "please leave us. This gentleman is quite forgetting himself and his language is shocking." Mary did not even look at her father. She was packing his little satchel with all that would be needed.
"Now pick him up and take him," she said firmly to big John. "He'll be all right when he sees your little boy, never mind what he says now."
Big John seized the doctor and bore him struggling and protesting to the wagon.
The doctor made an effort to get out.