leave work undone--"

"If you would only keep your windows _open_, my dear mother--"

Una marched to the window, snapped up the blind, banged up the sash, and
left the room.

"I really can't see why!" was all she added. She did not look at her
mother.

She slapped the living-room into order as though the disordered
bedclothes and newspapers were bad children. She put the potatoes on to
boil. She loosened her tight collar and sat down to read the "comic
strips," the "Beauty Hints," and the daily instalment of the
husband-and-wife serial in her evening paper. Una had nibbled at
Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, and _Vanity Fair_ in her high-school
days, but none of these had satisfied her so deeply as did the serial's
hint of sex and husband. She was absorbed by it. Yet all the while she
was irritably conscious of her mother's cough--hacking, sore-sounding,
throat-catching. Una was certain that this was merely one of the
frequent imaginary ailments of her mother, who was capable of believing
that she had cancer every time she was bitten by a mosquito. But this
incessant crackling made Una jumpily anxious.

She reached these words in the serial: "I cannot forget, Amy, that
whatever I am, my good old mother made me, with her untiring care and
the gentle words she spoke to me when worried and harassed with doubt."

Una threw down the paper, rushed into the bedroom, crouched beside her
mother, crying, "Oh, my mother sweetheart! You're just everything to
me," and kissed her forehead.

The forehead was damp and cold, like a cellar wall. Una sat bolt up in
horror. Her mother's face had a dusky flush, her lips were livid as
clotted blood. Her arms were stiff, hard to the touch. Her breathing,
rapid and agitated, like a frightened panting, was interrupted just then
by a cough like the rattling of stiff, heavy paper, which left on her
purple lips a little colorless liquid.

"Mother! Mother! My little mother--you're sick, you're really _sick_,
and I didn't know and I spoke so harshly. Oh, what _is_ it, what is it,
mother dear?"

"Bad--cold," Mrs. Golden whispered. "I started coughing last night--I
closed the door--you didn't hear me; you were in the other room--"
Another cough wheezed dismally, shook her, gurgled in her yellow
deep-lined neck. "C-could I have--window closed now?"

"No. I'm going to be your nurse. Just an awfully cranky old nurse, and
so scientific. And you must have fresh air." Her voice broke. "Oh, and