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 outside his door, angrily brush away her tears with the back of her hand, and go in smiling, her eyes shining ecstatically. Poor Joe, dear Joe, propped up with pillows, her old pink crocheted shawl around his shoulders, gasping with shallow painful breaths.

"Look, Joe! From the Mortimer girls." She opened a soiled old satin bonbon box. "Some of Miss Evangeline's nut cakes."

Joe pretended to try to lift one, keeping up the old joke, dear and familiar to them both, about the weight of Mortimer cake. Kate wanted to cry.

Everyone was so kind. Miss Smith came to the kitchen door with a small bunch of bruised-looking salmon sweet peas and a great deal of asparagus fern on the same day that Clark's boy brought a sheaf of American beauties from Mr. and Mrs. Driggs, the kind that cost a dollar apiece, with stems so long that nothing but the umbrella jar would hold them.

Kate moved through her days uplifted, nursing Joe unselfishly and lovingly, but in a glow of noble exaltation. She couldn't help knowing that Doctor Wells thought she was a wonderful little woman; she couldn't resist running down what she was doing in order to have him praise her. She liked having her little sitting room warm and welcoming for him when he came in out of the cold, a small fire of pine knots burning, ivy and geraniums looking out at the snow. She always remembered to offer him Joe's cigars. She was aglow with sweetness and selflessness while he was there,