“I don’t suppose,” he went on, “that she realizes it yet; she’s good as gold. She takes care of me, helpless as I am, always just as smiling and pleasant, and sets right by me, and don’t even go to church--just talks a little over the fence with the neighbors, so she can come and tell me what’s going on. Why, she even offered to give up gum, and she a needing it for her digestion so, ’cause she thought it might make me restless-like (and there is a kind of gum, you know, that squeaks a good deal when it’s new); but I ain’t so selfish as all that. But, oh, if I could just die decently, as a man should when he’s no more use, and not be a burden and a drag! For, you see, Emily’s a mighty fine figure of a woman, and she might easily find a new home, with some good, sound man for a husband--who would protect her, and not sit, as I do, waiting for the day to come when his wife will look at him with loathing.” “Mr. Brockwell,” I cried, “do you know that you are cruel to yourself and unjust to your wife?” He looked hard at me, but made no answer. “Your wife was always proud of you!” His face quivered--I had struck a wrong note--I hurried on: “proud of your character and standing, and of the pretty, little home you had so hardly earned, and now, oh, believe me, dear old friend, I know her heart better than you do yet--now she is proud to be the world for you, to be your feet, your nurse, your companion, your friend as well as wife.” He sadly shook his head: “She is a slave,” he said. “Yes, if you will, she is a slave to her love for you, therefore she is a happy slave. You have said, yourself, that she smiles on you constantly. She never looked better in her life, and why does she call you ‘father’ now?” His face brightened a little. “Yes,” he answered, “she has called me ‘father’ ever since the--the--(how he shrank from the word) since the paralysis came upon me--yes, ever since.” “And,” I went on, “can’t you see what that means? She used to call you Mr. Brockwell--but when your cruel affliction came upon you she felt the absolute need of some term of endearment, because she loved you.” Still, with the perversity of unhappiness, he exclaimed: “But Emily didn’t say that. She never told me that she--she--”