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Updated: May 21, 2025
No Margar in a cleaned coat would run about the decks of the steamer Martie pressed her hand over her dry and burning eyes. She wondered that she could think of these things and not go mad. The days went by; time did not stop. Wallace remained ill; Teddy had a cold, too. Mrs. Converse and John and Adele were there, all sympathetic, all helpful.
She is very ill Martie said to herself fearfully. She flew to her husband's side. "Wallie I hate to wake you! But Margar is croupy, and I'm going to run for Dr. Converse. Light the croup kettle, will you, I won't be a moment!" His daughter was the core of Wallace's heart. He was instantly alert. "Here, let me go, Mart! I'll get something on " "No, no, I'm dressed!
At six o'clock Margar, with her bottle, was tucked away in the front room, and Martie and Teddy sat down to their meal. Roused perhaps by the clatter of dishes, Wallace came from the bedroom to the kitchen door, and stood looking in. "Wallace," Martie said without preamble, "why did you never tell me that you borrowed money from Mr. Dryden?"
After a restless night, the sun woke her, morning after morning, glaring into her room at six. Wearily, languidly, she dressed the twisting and leaping Teddy, fastened little Margar, with her string of spools and her shabby double-gown, in the high-chair. The kitchen smelled of coffee, of grease; the whole neighbourhood smelled in the merciless heat of the summer day.
"Well, you tell Ted he'll catch it, if I hear any more of it!" She would go lifelessly back to the kitchen, to sip a cup of scalding black coffee. Margar went into her basket for her breakfast, banging the empty bottle rapturously against the wicker sides as a finale. "Wash both their faces, Isabeau," Martie would murmur, flinging back her head with a long, weary sigh.
The old double-gown with the middle button that did not match Martie had ironed only yesterday. She would not iron it again. The rag doll, and the strings of spools, and the shabby high-chair where Margar sat curling her little bare toes on summer mornings; these must vanish. The little feet were still. Gone! Gone, in an hour, all the dreaming and hoping.
Day after day she lay helpless; while Isabeau grumbled, Margar fretted, and Teddy grew noisy and unmanageable. Wallace was rarely at home, the dirt and confusion of the house rode Martie's sick brain like a nightmare.
There was no world, no sun, no protest, and no hope. There was only the question: Why? In the soft flicker of the gaslight Margar lay in unearthly beauty, the shadow of her dark eyelashes touching her cheek, a smile lingering on her baby mouth. She had been such a happy baby; Martie had loved to rumple and kiss the aureole of bright hair that framed the sleeping face.
If Pa could send her a few hundreds, if she could get the children into Lydia's hands, in the old house in the sunken garden, if Teddy and Margar could grow up in the beloved fogs and sunshine, the soft climate of home, then how bravely she could work, how hopefully she could struggle to get a foothold in the world for them!
Converse, the doctor's wife, had sent a big flannel duck, obviously second-hand, but none the less wonderful for that, for Margar; Teddy had not seen it, so it would be one more Christmas touch!
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