His kindly, emotional nature burst into flame.
“Now, Miss Carfax, you’ve just got to tell me if you’re wanting any sympathy, sympathy of the solid sort, I mean. Don’t stand on ceremony. I’m a man before I’m a ceremony.”
She found herself flushing.
“Thank you so much. I understand. I will tell you if I ever want to be helped.”
“Promise.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a dear, good girl.”
Mrs. Buss’s prophetic pessimism was justified by the event. Raw weather, leaky shoes and poor food may have helped in the overthrow, but early in March Eve caught influenzal pneumonia. The whole house was overturned. A trained nurse followed the doctor, and the nurse had to be provided with a bed, Mr. Albert Buss being reduced to sleeping on a sitting-room sofa. His mother’s grumbling now found a more ready echo in him. What was the use of making oneself uncomfortable for the benefit of a nurse who was plain and past thirty, and not worth meeting on the stairs?
Mrs. Buss grumbled at the extra housework and the additional cooking.
“Just my luck. Didn’t I say she’d get ill? She’ll have to pay me more a week for doing for the nurse and having my house turned upside down.”