"We need it badly enough!" He fingered the check absently. "I didn't
suppose we should ever have it, though!"
"I told him we needed it," she said casually.
"You begged it of him, I suppose!" A little trace of annoyance ran in
the words.
She received it equably. "I didn't do any begging, I guess. I just told
him we wanted it."
"So he handed it out!"
"Well--not right then. He said he'd think it over-- He gave it to me
this afternoon. Put it on my plate--for a kind of surprise." She was
looking at something and smiling mistily at it.
He watched her uneasily.
"He's a nice man!" she said, meeting the glance he bent upon her.
"You're tired," he responded abruptly.
"I am--a little mite tired."
He got up and opened his bag and fussed at bottles and shook something
into a bit of folded paper and held it out.
"There--take that."
"I don't need it!"
"You take it!"
She accepted it meekly, and he brought a glass of water from behind the
screen, and watched her drink it.
"Everybody seems to think you can chase all over town for them!" he
grumbled.
"It was quite a nice ride out there," replied Aunt Jane. She wiped the
taste of medicine furtively from her lips and set down the glass.
"He's going to give me a little home, too."
"What!" He glared at her fiercely.
She took hold of her bag--as if to protect something. "I knew you
wouldn't like it!" she said. "I hated to tell you! I thought maybe I'd
put it off ... not tell you for a good while."
"If you will tell me now--and not sit there gibbering and
chattering----"
She nodded. "Yes--I'd better do it to-night--right off--and get it done
with!" She opened the bag slowly. "Of course, I know you won't want me
to have it--" She looked at him doubtfully, holding on to the bit of
paper.
"Let me see it!" He held out an imperious hand, and she gave it up. And
he sat, with a check in each hand--one hand on either knee--and looked
at her severely.
"Any more?" he said bitingly.
"That's all!" She leaned back with a sigh. The worst was probably over.
He read first one check, and then the other, and looked up
swiftly--"They're both made out to you!"
"Yes! I saw he'd done it that way--I'm going to make the contagion one
over to you."
"They're both contagion, probably!" He smiled grimly.
"No--one is for me--and he said I could build it just the way I want,
and furnish it--and have my own way about everything!"
"You'll feel strange, won't you--having your own way!" He almost
growled, and tossed the checks at her:
"Take 'em!"
She went over to her desk and looked for her pen and sat down, dipping
it in ink, and sat very still--and presently her head nodded--she caught
herself, and sat up.
"I declare--I'm sleepy!" she said.
She dipped the pen again and her head nodded as she wrote.... "I don't
know when I've been so sleepy." She reached for the blotter. He came
over and took it from her and blotted the little paper carefully,
looking down at her kindly.
"It's time you went to sleep," he said.