“You’ll find it all done,” he told her genially. “You can’t beat me to it. Come along all the same, and we’ll play cribbage.” She was perplexed as well as shocked by his levity and at last simply threw herself on his mercy, “Lester, do tell me all about things,” she said in an honest, human tone of affection and concern which brought from him an answer in kind. “Well, Mattie, I will. It was hell at first ... all the kinds of hell there are. But you know how folks are, how you get used to everything. And I got better, got so it didn’t make me faint away with pain to have somebody touch the bed. And then little by little I settled down to where I am now. Both legs incurably paralyzed, I’m told, but the rest of me all right. In the meantime, Eva--you know how Eva never lies down and gives up--as soon as I could be left, hustled right out and got a job. She’s in the Cloak-and-Suits at Willing’s now, and making good money. What with her commissions on extra sales, she’s making just about what I did. With the promise of a good raise soon. The Willings have treated her very white, I must say. And I imagine she is the wonder of the world as a saleswoman.” “She would be, at anything!” breathed Mattie devoutly. “She surely would,” agreed her husband heartily. “Well, here at the house we’ve shuffled things around into a new pattern, and we’re getting on. I can do anything that needs to be done on this floor with Henry and Helen’s help, and the doctor says I’ll soon be on crutches and able to get upstairs once a day. It seemed queer to be doing housework, but there isn’t another mortal thing I can do but to keep things running. So I do.” “Poor Lester!” said Mattie, just as he knew she would. “Not on your life!” he told her. “I don’t mind the work a bit, now I’ve got used to the idea. I can’t say it is exactly enlivening to be tied up to half your body that’s dead but not buried, but I haven’t got anything else to complain of. As to the housework, I haven’t had such a good time in years. You know what an absent-minded scut I am, with my head always full of odds and ends of book-junk I like to mull over. Well, housework doesn’t interfere with thinking as account-keeping does, believe me! I can start my hands and arms to washing dishes or peeling potatoes or setting the table, and then leave them to do the job while I roam from China to Peru. Every time I tried that at the office--the bottom dropped out. Here I’ve more time for thinking and for reading too in the evenings! The children bring the books to me from the Library.” “Well, it’s very _brave_ of you to take it that way, I’m sure,” said Mattie with a decent sigh of sympathy.