The fund in the bank went on growing like a neglected garden, but it was growing for nothing. Eddie walked more slowly to and from the office, and Pheeny took a longer time to set the table. She had to sit down a good deal between trips and suffered a lot of pain. She said nothing about it to Eddie of evenings, but it grew harder to conceal her weakness from him when he helped her with the Sunday dinner.
Finally she could not walk to church one day and had to stay at home. He stayed with her, and their empty pew made a sensation. Eddie fought at Pheeny until she consented to see the doctor again—on Monday.
The doctor censured her for being foolish enough to try to die on her feet, and demanded of Eddie why they did not keep a hired girl. Eddie had never thought of it. He was horrified to realize how heartless and negligent he had been. He promised to get one in at once.
Pheeny stormed and wept against the very idea; but her protests ended on the morning when she could not get up to cook Eddie's breakfast for him. He had to get his own and hers, and he was late at the office for the first time in years. Two householders, seeing him going by, looked at their clocks and set them back half an hour.
Jabez spoke harshly to Eddie about his tardiness. It would never do to ignore an imperfection in the perfect. Eddie was Pheeny's nurse that night and overslept in the morning. It would have made him late again if he had stopped to fry an egg or boil a cup of coffee. He ran breakfastless to his desk.
After that Pheeny consented to the engagement of a cook. They tried five or six before they found one who combined the traits of being both enduring and endurable.
Eddie was afraid of her to a pitiful degree. She put too much coffee in his coffee and she made lighter bread than Pheeny did.
"There's no substance to her biscuits!" Eddie wailed, hoping to comfort Pheeny, who had leisure enough now to develop at that late date her first acquaintance with jealousy.
XII
The cook was young and vigorous, and a hired man on a farm might have called her good-looking; but her charms did not interest Eddie. His soul was replete with the companionship of his other self—Pheeny; and if Delia had been as sumptuous a beauty as Cleopatra he would have been still more afraid of her. He had no more desire to possess her than to own the Kohinoor.