"Oh! and I did try so hard!" she sobbed.
Joan put her arms round her. "You poor darling," she comforted, "don't cry; it's not so bad, really; only I don't see how I'm ever to leave you."
Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes. "But you must leave me," she said steadily. "I want you to go, since you've set your heart on it."
"Well, I do believe you'll starve!" said Joan, between laughter and tears.
Every evening Mrs. Ogden was worn out. She could not read, she could not sew; whenever she tried her eyelids drooped and she had to give it up. In the end she was forced to sit quietly with closed eyes. Joan, watching her apprehensively from the other side of the lamp, would feel her heart tighten.
"Mother, go to bed; you're tired to death."
"Oh, no, darling, I'll sit up with you; I shall have plenty of evenings to go to bed early when you've gone."
Not content, apparently, with moderate hours of work, Mrs. Ogden bought an alarm clock. The first that Joan knew of this instrument of torture was when it woke her with a fearful start at six-thirty one morning. She could not exactly locate whence the sound came, but rushed instinctively into her mother's room.
"What is it? Are you ill? What was that bell?" she panted.
Mrs. Ogden, already out of bed, pointed triumphantly to the alarm. "I had to get it to wake me up," she explained.