"What's gone wrong?" Ann pursued, anxiously. "Don't tell me your mother has found out about—"
"Oh no, it's not that," Virginia said, wiping her eyes with her disengaged hand. "It's not that. I'm just miserable, Mrs. Boyd, that's all—thoroughly miserable. You mustn't think I'm like this all the time, for I'm not. I've been cheerful at home all day—as cheerful as I could be under the circumstances; but, being alone out here for the first time, I got to thinking about my mother, and the sadness of it all was too much for me."
"She hain't worse, is she?" Ann asked.
"Not that anybody could see, Mrs. Boyd," the girl replied; "but the cancer must be worse. Two doctors from Springtown, who were riding by, stopped to ask for a drink of water, and my uncle told them about mother's trouble. It looked like they just wanted to see it out of professional curiosity, for when they heard we had no money and were deeply in debt they didn't offer any advice. But they looked very much surprised when they made an examination, and it was plain that they didn't think she had much chance. My mother was watching their faces, and knew what they thought, and when they had gone away she fairly collapsed. I never heard such pitiful moaning in all my life. She is more afraid of death than any one I ever saw, and she just threw herself on her bed and prayed for mercy. Oh, it was awful! awful! Then my uncle came in and said the doctors had said the specialist in Atlanta could really cure her, if she had the means to get the treatment, and that made her more desperate. From praying she turned almost to cursing in despair. My uncle is usually indifferent about most matters, but the whole thing almost made him sick. He went out to the side of the house to keep from hearing her cries. Some of his friends came along the road and joked with him, but he never spoke to them. He told me there was a young doctor at Darley who was willing to operate on her, but that he would be doing it only as an experiment, and that nobody but the Atlanta specialist would be safe in such a case."
"And the cost, if I understood right," said Ann—"the cost, first and last, would foot up to about a hundred dollars."
"Yes, that's what it would take," Virginia sighed.
Ann's brow was furrowed; her eyes flashed reminiscently. "She ought to have been laying by something all along," she said, "instead of making it her life business to harass and pull down a person that never did her no harm."
"Don't say anything against her!" Virginia flared up. "If you do, I shall be sorry I said what I did this morning. You have been kind to me, but not to her, and she is my mother, who is now lying at the point of death begging for help that never will come."
Ann stared steadily, and then her lashes began to flicker. "I don't know but I think more of you for giving me that whack, my girl," she said, simply. "I deserve it. I've got no right on earth to abuse a mother to her only child, much less a mother in the fix yours is in. No, I went too far, my child. You are not in the fight between me and her."
"You ought to be ashamed to be in it, when she's down," said Virginia, warmly.