“I’m that short of breath!” she gasped.  “I declare I could hardly get back.”

“I’ll give you some coffee, right off.”

When Willy Cameron had finished his breakfast she followed him into the parlor.  His pallor was not lost on her, or his sunken eyes.  He looked badly fed, shabby, and harassed, and he bore the marks of his sleepless night on his face.  “Are you going to stay here?” she demanded.

“Why, yes, Miss Ellen.”

“Your mother would break her heart if she knew the way you’re living.”

“I’m very comfortable.  We’ve tried to get a ser—­” He changed color at that.  In the simple life of the village at home a woman whose only training was the town standard of good housekeeping might go into service in the city and not lose caste.  But she was never thought of as a servant. “—­help,” he substituted.  “But we can’t get any one, and Mrs. Boyd is delicate.  It is heart trouble.”

“Does that girl work where you do?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“Is she engaged to you?  She calls you Willy.”  He smiled into her eyes.

“Not a bit of it, or thinking of it.”

“How do you know what she’s thinking?  It’s all over her.  It’s Willy this and Willy that—­and men are such fools.”

There flashed into his mind certain things that he had tried to forget; Edith at his doorway, with that odd look in her eyes; Edith never going to sleep until he had gone to bed; and recently, certain things she had said, that he had passed over lightly and somewhat uncomfortably.

“That’s ridiculous, Miss Ellen.  But even if it were true, which it isn’t, don’t you think it would be rather nice of her?” He smiled.

“I do not.  I heard you going out last night, Willy.  Did you find her?”

“She is at the Doyles’.  I didn’t see her.”

“That’ll finish it,” Ellen prophesied, somberly.  She glanced around the parlor, at the dust on the furniture, at the unwashed baseboard, at the unwound clock on the mantel shelf.

“If you’re going to stay here I will,” she announced abruptly.  “I owe that much to your mother.  I’ve got some money.  I’ll take what they’d pay some foreigner who’d throw out enough to keep another family.”  Then, seeing hesitation in his eyes:  “That woman’s sick, and you’ve got to be looked after.  I could do all the work, if that—­if the girl would help in the evenings.”

He demurred at first.  She would find it hard.  They had no luxuries, and she was accustomed to luxury.  There was no room for her.  But in the end he called Edith and Mrs. Boyd, and was rather touched to find Edith offering to share her upper bedroom.

“It’s a hole,” she said, “cold in winter and hot as blazes in summer.  But there’s room for a cot, and I guess we can let each other alone.”

“I wish you’d let me move up there, Edith,” he said for perhaps the twentieth time since he had found out where she slept, “and you would take my room.”