"What will become of us?" they were thinking, each in his or her own terrified soul.
"I can't go back to school!"
"This means no college for me!"
"I'll have to stay in this awful town the rest of my life!"
"I can't go to San Francisco! The greatest honor of my life is taken from me just as I grasped it."
"I had a commission to paint the portrait of an ambassador at Washington—it would have been the making of me! It meant a lot of money, too. I came home to ask Pop to stake me to money enough to live on until it was finished."
"My business will go to smash! I'll be saddled with debts for the rest of my life. If I could have hung on a little longer I'd have reached the shore; but the bank wouldn't lend me a cent. Nobody would. I came home to ask Pop to raise me some cash. I counted on him. He never failed me before."
"What will become of us all?"
There was a stir on the pillow. The still head began to rock, the throat to swell, the lips to twitch.
Mère ran to the bedside and knelt by it, laying her hand on the forehead. A miracle had been wrought in the very texture of his brow. He was whispering something. She put her ear to his lips.