for--u-r-r-r!--all concerned--e-hee! ee-e!
ee-e-e-e! Oh my head! my head! Oh, I got to scratch my nose again. You
ain't rubbing the right place!"

"And what did Mrs. Glenn say?" asked Emmy. A ripple ran over her face,
and she swallowed before she spoke.

"She said you wouldn't give Albert up, real spiteful. Ah-rr-r! Oh, I
_am_ so sick! I said you would ruther than have your mother so
insulted--and if you don't I guess I'll give up trying to live. She was
so topping. Much as telling me it would be better for my own child if I
died. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! And Albert looked as cross last
night--"

"Did Albert come last night?"

"Yes, he did. You needn't jump out of the chair! I told him you wasn't
home, and you had gone out to the Collins spring. He said when would you
be home, and I said I didn't know. And he went off mad. Oh-h! oh-h-h!
Jinny says Carrie March says she saw him down-town riding on his bicycle
with Susan Baker. O-h-h-h-h! How can I talk when I'm so sick? Girls
don't know about young men. Bert wouldn't like you to see him sometimes,
be sure of that!" She paused to moan, and Emmy looked at her in a misery
of doubt. Was she telling the truth? It had come to that, since Mrs.
Darter had grown to take her soothing drops in every ailment--there was
no surety that she either saw things straight or told them straight.

"I guess I'll go make you some coffee, mother," said Emmy; "you need
it."

The girl's self-control was like tinder to the woman's fire. Mrs. Darter
flared out: "You needn't make any coffee. I won't drink it. What's more,
I won't eat one bite until you promise me to break with Bert Glenn--not
if I starve to death! If you're willing to let those Glenns insult me
and triumph over me, I ain't willing to live to see it." Her feeble
accents shrilled to a scream, as she flung out her arms with a
reminiscence of the behavior of her favorite heroines in novels. "Go,
Emmeline Darter, marry him if you dare; but you will pass to the altar
over your only mother's grave!" She had a confused sense that her syntax
had played her false and that she had not gotten the words precisely
right; but she covered any embarrassment by sinking back and moaning.

Emmy looked at her with a mounting terror in her heart. She told herself
that it was impossible that her mother could carry out such a hideous
threat; but she knew that mucilaginous obstinacy which had not a place
firm enough for a reason to get a hold. "And