She cherished the delusion that he was improving and gaining flesh under her ministrations, and there was a sort of jealousy in her care for him. She wanted to yield to no one the right to sit proudly behind one of her heavy, tasteless pies, and say: "Now I made this for you, Willy, because I know country boys like pies. Just see if that crust isn't nice."
"You don't mean to say you made it!"
"I certainly did." And to please her he would clear his plate. He rather ran to digestive tablets those days, and Edith, surprising him with one at the kitchen sink one evening, accused him roundly of hypocrisy.
"I don't know why you stay anyhow," she said, staring into the yard where Jinx was burying a bone in the heliotrope bed. "The food's awful. I'm used to it, but you're not."
"You don't eat anything, Edith."
"I'm not hungry. Willy, I wish you'd go away. What right we got to tie you up with us, anyhow? We're a poor lot. You're not comfortable and you know it. D'you know where she is now?"
"She" in the vernacular of the house, was always Mrs. Boyd.
"She forgot to make your bed, and she's doing it now."
He ran up the stairs, and forcibly putting Mrs. Boyd in a chair, made up his own bed, awkwardly and with an eye on her chest, which rose and fell alarmingly. It was after that that he warned Edith.
"She's not strong," he said. "She needs care and--well, to be happy. That's up to the three of us. For one thing, she must not have a shock. I'm going to warn Dan against exploding paper bags; she goes white every time."
Dan was at a meeting, and Willy dried the supper dishes for Edith. She was silent and morose. Finally she said: "She's not very strong for me, Willy. You needn't look so shocked. She loves Dan and you, but not me. I don't mind, you know. She doesn't know it, but I do."
"She is very proud of you."
"That's different. You're right, though. Pride's her middle name. It nearly killed her at first to take a roomer, because she is always thinking of what the neighbors will say. That's why she hates me sometimes."
"I wish you wouldn't talk that way."
"But it's true. That fool Hodge woman at the corner came here one day last winter and filled her up with a lot of talk about me, and she's been queer to me ever since."