Now he walked to the kitchen door and knocked, and Jane's voice bade him enter. He took off his hat as he entered. His sister was sitting at the kitchen table where, despite the lateness of the hour, she had evidently just finished her breakfast. As she turned her head all Peter's optimism fled, for Jane's eyes were red with weeping. When her sorrows pressed heavily upon Jane she was a very fountain of tears. She threw up her hands as she saw Peter.
"Oh, mercy me, Peter Lane!" she cried in a heart-broken voice. "Look what you've come to at your time of life. Nothing to wear but old rags and horse blankets on back and foot! It does seem as if nothing ever went right for you since the day you were born. Just poverty and bad-health and trouble, and one thing after another." She wiped her eyes to make room in them for fresh tears. "Every time I think of you, freezing to death in that shanty-boat, and going hungry and cold, I--it makes me so miserable--it makes me feel so bad--"
"Now, Jane," said Peter uncomfortably, "don't cry! Don't do it! It ain't so bad as all that. Every time I come to see you, you just cry and carry on, and I tell you I don't need it done for me. I'm all right. I get along somehow."
"Never, never once, have I said an unkind word to you, Peter," said Jane damply. "You shouldn't upbraid me with it, for I know it ain't your fault you turned out this way. I know you ain't got the health to go to work and earn a living, if you wanted to. I do what I can to keep your house from falling down on my head. When I think what would become of this house if you didn't have me to do what I can to mend it up--the roof's leakin' worse than ever."
"As soon as spring comes, I'm going to get some shingles and shingle up the leaky places," said Peter. "Maybe I'll put a whole new roof on. Now, just listen to what I want to say, please, Jane."
"It's that makes me feel so awful bad, Peter," said Jane, shaking her head. "You mean so well, and you promise so much, and you see things so big, and yet you ain't got money to buy shoes nor clothes nor anything, and for all I know you might be lying sick without a bite to eat, and me having all I can do to hold body and soul together in a house like this. Time and again I've made up my mind to go and leave it, and I would if it wasn't for you. I feel my duty by you, and I stay, but work in a house like this wears me to the bone. It does. To the bone!"