She slapped the living-room into order as though the disordered bedclothes and newspapers were bad children. She put the potatoes on to boil. She loosened her tight collar and sat down to read the "comic strips," the "Beauty Hints," and the daily instalment of the husband-and-wife serial in her evening paper. Una had nibbled at Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, and _Vanity Fair_ in her high-school days, but none of these had satisfied her so deeply as did the serial's hint of sex and husband. She was absorbed by it. Yet all the while she was irritably conscious of her mother's cough--hacking, sore-sounding, throat-catching. Una was certain that this was merely one of the frequent imaginary ailments of her mother, who was capable of believing that she had cancer every time she was bitten by a mosquito. But this incessant crackling made Una jumpily anxious. She reached these words in the serial: "I cannot forget, Amy, that whatever I am, my good old mother made me, with her untiring care and the gentle words she spoke to me when worried and harassed with doubt." Una threw down the paper, rushed into the bedroom, crouched beside her mother, crying, "Oh, my mother sweetheart! You're just everything to me," and kissed her forehead. The forehead was damp and cold, like a cellar wall. Una sat bolt up in horror. Her mother's face had a dusky flush, her lips were livid as clotted blood. Her arms were stiff, hard to the touch. Her breathing, rapid and agitated, like a frightened panting, was interrupted just then by a cough like the rattling of stiff, heavy paper, which left on her purple lips a little colorless liquid. "Mother! Mother! My little mother--you're sick, you're really _sick_, and I didn't know and I spoke so harshly. Oh, what _is_ it, what is it, mother dear?" "Bad--cold," Mrs. Golden whispered. "I started coughing last night--I closed the door--you didn't hear me; you were in the other room--" Another cough wheezed dismally, shook her, gurgled in her yellow deep-lined neck. "C-could I have--window closed now?" "No. I'm going to be your nurse. Just an awfully cranky old nurse, and so scientific. And you must have fresh air." Her voice broke. "Oh, and me sleeping away from you! I'll never do it again. I don't know what I _would_ do if anything happened to you.... Do you feel any headache, dear?" "No--not--not so much as-- Side pains me--here." Mrs. Golden's words labored like a steamer in heavy seas; the throbbing of her heart shook them like the throb of the engines. She put her hand to her right side, shakily, with effort. It lay there, yellow against the white muslin of her nightgown, then fell heavily to the bed, like a dead thing. Una trembled with fear as her mother continued, "My pulse--it's so fast--so hard breathing--side pain." "I'll put on an ice compress and then I'll go and get a doctor." Mrs. Golden tried to sit up. "Oh no, no, no! Not a doctor! Not a doctor!" she croaked. "Doctor Smyth will be busy."