"Well, Briggs, I hope you feel better now," Blakeley began. "You certainly told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But I wonder you had the heart to do it before that sick girl."
"I didn't have the heart," Briggs shouted. "But I had the courage, and if you say one word more, Blakeley, I'll throw you out of the room. I'm going to leave! My board's paid if yours isn't."
He went wildly about, catching things down here and there from nails and out of drawers. The tears stood in his eyes. But suddenly he stopped and listened to the sounds from below—the sound of the silly singing in the parlor, and the sound of sobbing in the dining-room, and the sound of vain entreating between the sobs.
"Oh, I don't suppose I'm fit to keep a boarding-house. I never was a good manager; and everybody imposes on me, and everything is so dear, and I don't know what's good from what's bad. Your poor father used to look after all that."
"Well, don't you cry, now, mother! It'll all come right, you'll see. I'm getting so I can go and do the marketing now; and if Minervy would only help a little—"
"No, no!" the mother's voice came anxiously up. "We can get along without her; we always have. I know he likes her, and I want to give her every chance. We can get along. If she was on'y married, once, we could all live—" A note of self-comforting gradually stole into the mother's voice, and the sound of a nose violently blown seemed to note a period in her suffering.
"Oh, mother, I wish I was well!" The girl's voice came with a burst of wild lamenting.
"'Sh, 'sh, deary!" her mother entreated. "He'll hear you, and then—"
"'Hazel Dell'?" the silly voice came from the parlor, with a sound of fright in it. "I can sing it without the music." The piano keys twittered the prelude and the voice sang:
"In the Hazel Dell my Nelly's sleeping,
Nelly loved so long!"