and so are all of us, and--and-- Will you let me go up-stairs now,
Mrs. Betterson?"

His voice had risen, not so high but that another voice from the
parlor could prevail over it: a false, silly, girl voice, with the
twitter of piano-keys as from hands swept over the whole board to help
drown the noise of the quarrel in the hall. "Oh yes, I'll sing it
again, Mr. Saunders, if you sa-a-a-y."

Then this voice lifted itself in a silly song, and a silence followed
the voices in the hall, except for the landlady's saying, brokenly:
"Well, all right, Mr. Briggs. You can go up to your room for all me.
I've tried to be a mother to you boys, but if _this_ is what I get for
it!"

The two at the threshold of Briggs's room retreated within, as he
bounded furiously upon them and slammed the door after him. It started
open again, from the chronic defect of the catch, but he did not care.

"Well, Briggs, I hope you feel better now," Blakeley began. "You
certainly told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing _but_ the
truth. But I wonder you had the heart to do it before that sick girl."

"I _didn't_ have the heart," Briggs shouted. "But I had the courage,
and if you say one word more, Blakeley, I'll throw you out of the
room. I'm going to leave! _My_ board's paid if yours isn't."

He went wildly about, catching things down here and there from nails
and out of drawers. The tears stood in his eyes. But suddenly he
stopped and listened to the sounds from below--the sound of the silly
singing in the parlor, and the sound of sobbing in the dining-room,
and the sound of vain entreating between the sobs.

"Oh, I don't suppose I'm fit to keep a boarding-house. I never was a
good manager; and everybody imposes on me, and everything is so dear,
and I don't know what's good from what's bad. Your poor father used
to look after all that."

"Well, don't you cry, now, mother! It'll all come right, you'll see.
I'm getting so I can go and do the marketing now; and if Minervy would
only help a little--"

"No, no!" the mother's voice came anxiously up. "We can get along
without her; we always have. I know he likes her, and I want to give
her every chance. _We_ can get along. If she was on'y married, once,
we could all live--" A note of self-comforting gradually stole into
the mother's voice, and the sound of a nose violently blown seemed to
note a period in her suffering.

"Oh, mother, I wish I was well!" The girl's voice came with a burs