Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/287

Rh the saints, her holy-water font, and her photographs. She even began to tie up her bedding in a bundle, but left it until she should see Bailey. "I can't move till mornin' annyways," she said, "an' I 'll not sleep on the floor to please nobody."

She did not go in to her daughter again; and Hetty, in a high fever, with a blinding headache, had the satisfaction of finding herself seriously ill. When Bailey came home, she was in such a state that he ran out again for the doctor. Mrs. Joliffe looked on at his anxiety, grimly contemptuous, and sat down to her lonely dinner, eating and drinking mechanically, with her eyes blank and her face resolute.

"I 'm leavin' here in the mornin'," she told him.

The doctor was in the other room, and Bailey was awaiting his opinion of the case. "Leaving?" he said. "She 's sick."

"She 'll let me do nothin' fer her. She 'll eat nothin' I cook. She wants a gurl. She wants to be rid o' me. I 'm goin'."

He wandered back to the bedroom again.

She heard the murmur of the doctor's voice and she said to herself: "He c'n cure her bad timper, no doubt! It 's all that 's wrong with her!" When she heard the doctor go out, she took Bailey's dinner from the oven, ready for his return to the table. "Poor boy," she said. "She 'll lead him a life!"

He came out to her, pale. "She wants to see you," he said huskily.

"What is it?"