by her mother’s extraordinary reasoning. “You know that a man is not built the same way as a tree!”
“Why,” Eliza cried impatiently, “why not? They’re both Nature’s products, aren’t they? Now, here,” she said persuasively, “just stop and consider the thing for a moment. Just imagine for a moment that you’re the tree.” Here she took her strong worn fingers and traced a line down Helen’s stomach. “Now,” she went on persuasively, “you’ve got some kind of growth inside you—call it what you like—a tumour, a growth, a cancer—anything you will—and your healthy tissues get to work to get the best of that growth—to build up a wall around it—to destroy it—to replace it with sound tissues, weed it out! Now,” she said, clenching her fingers in a loose but powerful clasp—“if a tree can do that, doesn’t it stand to reason that a man can do the same? Why, I wouldn’t doubt it for a moment!” she cried powerfully. “Not a bit of it.”
Thus the two women talked together according to the laws of their nature—the one with an invincible and undaunted optimism that persauded itself in the octopal pursuit of its own reasonings, the other clutching like a drowning person at a straw.
XXIX
He had not heard from any of his family for some weeks, but late that night, while he was reading in his room on Trowbridge Street, he received the following telegram from home: “Father very ill doctor says cannot live come at once.” The telegram was signed by his mother.
He telephoned the railway information offices and was informed that there was a train for New York and the South in about an hour. If he hurried, he could catch it. He did not have enough money for the fare; he knew that he might hunt up Starwick, Dodd, Professor Hatcher, or other people that he knew, and get the money, but the delay would make him miss the train. Accordingly, he appealed to the person he knew best in the house, and who would be, he thought, most likely to help him. This was Mr. Wang, the Chinese student.
Mr. Wang was as good-hearted as he was stupid and childlike and now, faced with the need of getting money at once, the boy appealed to him. Mr. Wang came to his door and blinked owlishly; behind him the room was a blur of smoke and incense, and the big cabinet victrola was giving forth for the dozenth time that evening the hearty strains of “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”
When Mr. Wang saw him, his round yellow face broke into a foolish
