Emeline, alone, would brood resentfully over her cards.  That was the way of it:  men could run off to saloons, while she, pretty and young, and with the love of life still strong in her veins, might as well be dead and buried!  Bored and lonely, she would creep into bed beside Julia, after turning the front-room light down to a bead, and flinging over the “bed lounge,” upon which George spent the night, the musty sheets and blankets and the big soggy pillows.

But George, meanwhile, would have found warmth, brightness, companionship, and good food.  The drink that was his passport to all these good things was the least of them in his eyes.  George did not care particularly for drink, but he usually came home the worse for it on these occasions, and Emeline had a real foundation for her furious harangues in the morning.  She would scold while she carried him in hot coffee or chopped ice, scold while she crimped her hair and covered her face with a liquid bleach, scold as she jerked Julia’s little bonnet on the child’s lovely mane, and depart, with a final burst of scolding and a bang of the door.

One day Emeline came in to find George at home, ill.  She had said good-bye to him only the day before, for what was supposedly a week, and was really concerned to find him back so soon, shivering and mumbling, and apparently unable to get into bed.  Emeline sent Julia flying to a neighbour, made George as comfortable as she could in the big bed, and listened, with a conviction as firm as his own, to what he believed to be parting instructions and messages.

“I’m going, Em,” said George heavily.  “I’m worse now than I was when I started for home.  I wanted to see you again, baby girl, and Julia, too.  I—­I can’t breathe—–­”

Julia presently came flying in with a doctor and with a neighbour, Mrs. Cotter, who had telephoned to him.  The doctor said that George had a sharp touch of influenza, and Emeline settled down to nurse him.

George was a bad patient.  He had a great many needs, and he mentioned one after another in the weighty, serious tone of a person imparting valuable information.

“Ice—­ice,” said George, moving hot eyes to meet his wife’s glance as she came in.  “And take that extra blanket off, Emeline, and—­no hurry, but I’ll try the soup again whenever you say—­I seem to feel weak.  I must have more air, dear.  Help me sit up, Em, and you can shake these pillows up again.  I think I’m a good deal sicker man than Allan has any idea—–­”

Emeline got very tired of it, especially as George was much better on the third day, and could sit up.  He developed a stiff neck, which made him very irritable, and even Julia “got on his nerves” and was banished for the day to the company of the cheerful Jewish family who lived on an upper floor.  He sat in an armchair, wrapped in blankets, his rigid gaze roving a pitifully restricted perspective of street outside the window, an elaborate cough occasionally racking him.