Despite the change of name and the greater changes wrought by the hand
of time, she knows him at once. It is Richard, her brother.
THE ELEVENTH HOUR.
It was an ordinary tenement house of the poorest class, exactly like its
neighbors, which lined both sides of the dingy street. The door was
always open, more than half the time hanging by one hinge, the stairways
were dark and crooked, the rooms small and dirty. In a back kitchen on
the topmost floor, a man sat, or rather huddled, in a chair drawn close
to the stove. His eyes were closed and his head drooped wearily against
the back of the chair. That last spell of coughing had been unusually
severe and had left him weak and breathless. A plague on the cough,
anyway. Why was it he could not get rid of it? The doctor from the
dispensary, the district nurse, even Maggie, had assured him that with
the coming of summer this cold of his would be better. Summer was here,
though you would not think so to-day with this raw east wind and
drizzling rain, and instead of being better he was worse, decidedly
worse. Could it be that they were all wrong and Nancy alone was in the
right? Nancy, who, of all that approached him, was the only one who
dared to tell him the truth. The truth? No, it was a lie, a lie; he was
not dying, he was going to be well and strong again as soon as he could
shake this cold that had settled upon him.
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