Little Pearl was a good cook, however, and Will made the fires and did what little marketing there was, so that their mother did not suffer for want of attention.
Still she fretted, and a fever followed, and Will went after a doctor on his own responsibility, and placed his mother in his care.
The man of medicine made three visits, and his pay took two-thirds of the little money the poor woman had, and she determined to get up and go to work to earn more.
But she could do but little, and, weak and wretched, she gained strength very slowly.
Then Will went out to see what he could get to do, and each night he came in with a few pence, earned by blacking boots, running errands or selling papers, and this helped to eke out a subsistence for all three.
Mrs. Raymond did not seem to suffer pain, she had no fever, but her ailment appeared to be heart trouble, and night after night she lay awake brooding over her sorrows.
Surprised, as the days passed, that Will seemed to be bringing in more money each day, she wondered at it, and questioned him, but he merely said that he picked it up in odd jobs.
"But, Will, you are looking pale and haggard, and you are working too hard," seeing that he did look wan and white.
"No, mother, I'm all right," he answered, and so the conversation ended.
But that night Mrs. Raymond could not sleep, and growing strangely nervous, she went to wake her son to talk to her for awhile.