On her way down-town Cynthia stopped to see G. G.'s mother and found the whole household in the throes occasioned by its head's pneumonia.
"Why haven't you let me know?" exclaimed Cynthia. "There must be so many little things that I could have done to help you."
Though the sick man couldn't have heard them if they had shouted, the two women talked in whispers, with their heads very close together.
"He's better," said G. G.'s mother, "but yesterday they wanted me to send for G. G. 'No,' I said. 'You may have given him up, but I haven't. If I send for my boy it would look as if I had surrendered,' And almost at once, if you'll believe it, he seemed to shake off something that was trying to strangle him and took a turn for the better; and now they say that, barring some long names, he will get well.... It does look, my dear, as if death had seen that there was no use facing a thoroughly determined woman."
At this point, because she was very much overwrought, G. G.'s mother had a mild little attack of hysteria; and Cynthia beat her on the back and shook her and kissed her until she was over it. Then G. G.'s mother told Cynthia about her financial troubles.
"It isn't us that matters," she said, "but that G. G. ought to have one more year in a first-rate climate; and it isn't going to be possible to give it to him. They say that he's well, my dear, absolutely well; but that now he should have a chance to build up and become strong and heavy, so that he can do a man's work in the world. As it is, we shall have to take him home to live; and you know what New York dust and climate can do to people who have been very, very ill and are still delicate and high-strung."
"There's only one thing to do for the present," said Cynthia--"anybody with the least notion of business knows that--we must keep him at Saranac just as long as our credit holds out, mustn't we?--until the woman where he boards begins to act ugly and threatens to turn him out in the snow."
"Oh, but that would be dreadful!" said G. G.'s mother. Cynthia smiled in a superior way.
"I don't believe," she said, "that you understand the first thing about business. Even my father, who is a prude about bills, says that all the business of the country is done on credit.... Now you're not going to be silly, are you?--and make G. G. come to New York before he has to?"
