"What do you want me to say, Mrs. Champney?" She spoke wearily, but not
impatiently. The daily, almost hourly demands of this sick old woman
had, in a way, exhausted her.

"Tell me what he's doing."

"He's at work."

"Where?"

"In the sheds--Shed Number Two."

"What!" Paralysis prevented any movement of her hands, but her head
jerked on the pillow to one side, towards Aileen.

"I said he was at work in the sheds."

"What's Champney Googe doing in the sheds?"

"Earning his living, I suppose, like other men."

Almeda Champney was silent for a while. Aileen could but wonder what the
thoughts might be that were filling the shrivelled box of the
brain--what were the feelings in the ossifying heart of the woman who
had denied help to one of her own blood in time of need. Had she any
feeling indeed, except that for self?

"Have you seen him?"

"No."

"I should think he would want to hide his head for shame."

"I don't see why." She spoke defiantly.

"Why? Because I don't see how after such a career a man can hold up his
head among his own."

Aileen bit her under lip to keep back the sharp retort. She chose
another and safer way.

"Oh," she said brightly, looking over to Mrs. Champney with a frank
smile, "but he has really just begun his career, you know--"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean he has just begun honest work among honest men, and that's the
best career for him or any other man to my thinking."

"Umph!--little you know about it."

Aileen laughed outright. "Oh, I know more than you think I do, Mrs.
Champney. I haven't lived twenty-six years for nothing, and what I've
seen, I've seen--and I've no near-sighted eyes to trouble me either; and
what I've heard, I've heard, for my ears are good--regular long-distance
telephones sometimes."

She was not prepared for the next move on Mrs. Champney's part.

"I believe you would marry him now--after all, if he asked you." She
spoke with a sneer.

"Do you really believe it?" She folded her work and prepared to leave
the room, for she heard the nurse's step in the hall below. "Well, if
you do, I'll tell you something, Mrs. Champney, but I'd like it to be
between us." She crossed the room and paused beside the bed.

"What?"

She bent slightly towards her. "I would rather marry a man who earns his
three dollars a day at honest work of quarrying or cutting stones,--or
breaking them, for that matter,"--she added under her breath, "but I'm
not sa