"I do not. I heard you going out last night, Willy. Did you find
her?"
"She is at the Doyles'. I didn't see her."
"That'll finish it," Ellen prophesied, somberly. She glanced around
the parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard,
at the unwound clock on the mantel shelf.
"If you're going to stay here I will," she announced abruptly. "I
owe that much to your mother. I've got some money. I'll take what
they'd pay some foreigner who'd throw out enough to keep another
family." Then, seeing hesitation in his eyes: "That woman's sick,
and you've got to be looked after. I could do all the work, if
that--if the girl would help in the evenings."
He demurred at first. She would find it hard. They had no luxuries,
and she was accustomed to luxury. There was no room for her. But
in the end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to
find Edith offering to share her upper bedroom.
"It's a hole," she said, "cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.
But there's room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone."
"I wish you'd let me move up there, Edith," he said for perhaps the
twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, "and you would
take my room.
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