After supper that night he patrolled before Ellaphine's home and tried to pluck up courage enough to twist that old door-bell again. Suddenly she ran into him. She was sneaking through the front gate. He tried to talk to her, but she said:
"I'm in a tur'ble hurry. I got to go to the drug-store and get some chloroform liniment. Mamma's lumbago's awful bad."
He walked along with her, though she tried to escape him. The first drowsy lamp-post showed him that Ellaphine had been crying. It was the least becoming thing she could have done. Eddie asked whether her mother was so sick as all that. She said "No"—then changed to "Yes"—and then stopped short and began to blubber uncouthly, dabbing her eyes alternately with the backs of her wrists.
Eddie stared awhile, then yielded to an imperious urge to clasp her to his heart and comfort her. She twisted out of his arms, and snapped, "Don't you touch me, Eddie Pouch!"
Eddie mumbled, inanely, "You didn't mind it this mornin', buggy-ridin'."
Her answer completely flabbergasted him:
"No; because you didn't have all that money then."
"Gee whiz, Pheeny!" he gasped. "What you got against Uncle Loren's money? It ain't a disease, is it? It's not ketchin', is it?"
"No," she sobbed; "but we—Well, when you were so poor and all, I thought you might—you might really like me because I could be of some—of some use to you; but now you—you needn't think I'm goin' to hold you to any—anything against your will."
Eddie realized that across the street somebody had stopped to listen. Eddie wanted to throw a rock at whoever it was, but Ellaphine absorbed him as she wailed: