she could speak. “Did I get a letter? Have you seen him?”
“Seen who? Go on!” said Eliza fretfully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t believe you do, either.”
Smiling hideously at them all, and pawing the air, the monster got under way again, disappearing like an old wagon with loose wheels. Helen began to laugh, hoarsely, as Eugene’s face hung forward with mouth half-open in an expression of sullen stupefaction. Eliza laughed, too, slily, rubbing her nosewing with a finger.
“I’ll vow!” she said. “I believe she’s crazy. She takes dope of some sort—that’s certain. It makes my flesh crawl when she comes around.”
“Then why do you keep her in the house?” said Helen resentfully. “Good heavens, mama! You could get rid of her if you wanted to. Poor old’Gene!” she said, beginning to laugh again. “You always catch it, don’t you?”
“The time draws near the birth of Christ,” said he, piously.
She laughed; then, with abstracted eyes, plucked vaguely at her large chin.
His father spent most of the day staring vacantly into the parlor fire. Miss Florry Mangle, the nurse, gave him the morbid comfort of her silence: she rocked incessantly before the fire, thirty heel-taps to the minute, with arms tight-folded on her limp breasts. Occasionally she talked of death and disease. Gant had aged and wasted shockingly. His heavy clothes wound round his feeble shanks: his face was waxen and transparent—it was like a great beak. He looked clean and fragile. The cancer, Eugene thought, flowered in him like some terrible but beautiful plant. His mind was very clear, not doting, but sad and old. He spoke little, with almost comical gentleness, but he ceased to listen almost as soon as one answered.
“How have you been, son?” he asked. “Are you getting along all right?”
“Yes. I am a reporter on the paper now; I may be managing editor next year. I have been elected to several organizations,” he went on eagerly, glad of the rare chance to speak to one of them
