“Yes, I can do that,” replied Maria, with alacrity, and indeed she could.  Her mother had exacted some small household tasks from her, and setting the table was one of them.  She hurried into the dining-room and began setting the table with the pretty blue-flowered ware that her mother had been so proud of.  She seemed to feel tears in her heart when she laid the plates, but none sprang to her eyes.  Somehow, handling these familiar inanimate things was the acutest torture.  Presently she smelled eggs burning.  She realized that her father was burning up the eggs, in his utter ignorance of cookery.  She thought privately that she didn’t believe but she could cook the eggs, but she dared not go out in the kitchen.  Her father, in his anxiety, had actually reached ferocity.  He had always petted her, in his easy-going fashion, now he terrified her.  She dared not go out there.

All at once, as she was getting the clean napkins from the sideboard, she heard the front door open, and one of the neighbors, Mrs. Jonas White, entered without knocking.  She was a large woman and carelessly dressed, but her great face was beaming with kindness and pity.

“I just heard how bad your ma was,” she said, in a loud whisper, “an’ I run right over.  I thought mebbe—­How is she?”

“She is very sick,” replied Maria.  She felt at first an impulse to burst into tears before this broadside of sympathy, then she felt stiff.

“You are as white as a sheet,” said Mrs. White.  “Who is burnin’ eggs out there?” She pointed to the kitchen.

“Father.”

“Lord!  Who’s up-stairs?”

“Miss Bell and the doctors.  They’ve sent for Aunt Maria, but she can’t come before afternoon.”

Mrs. White fastened a button on her waist.  “Well, I’ll stay till then,” said she.  “Lillian can get along all right.”  Lillian was Mrs. White’s eighteen-year-old daughter.

Mrs. White opened the kitchen door.  “How is she?” she said in a hushed voice to Harry Edgham, frantically stirring the burned eggs, which sent up a monstrous smoke and smell.  As she spoke, she went over to him, took the frying-pan out of his hands, and carried it over to the sink.

“She is a very sick woman,” replied Harry Edgham, looking at Mrs. White with a measure of gratitude.

“You’ve got Dr. Williams and Miss Bell, Maria says?”

“Yes.”

“Maria says her aunt is coming?”

“Yes, I sent a telegram.”

“Well, I’ll stay till she gets here,” said Mrs. White, and again that expression of almost childish gratitude came over the man’s face.  Mrs. White began scraping the burned eggs off the pan.

“They haven’t had any breakfast,” said Harry, looking upward.

“And they don’t dare leave her?”

“No.”

“Well, you just go and do anything you want to, Maria and I will get the breakfast.”  Mrs. White spoke with a kindly, almost humorous inflection.  Maria felt that she could go down on her knees to her.