"A pot of glass was turned over."
Jennie looked at her mother, and her eyes dimmed with tears.
Instinctively she ran to her and put her arms around her.
"Now, don't you cry, ma," she said, barely able to control herself.
"Don't you worry.
I know how you feel, but we'll get along.
Don't cry now."
Then her own lips lost their evenness, and she struggled long before she could pluck up courage to contemplate this new disaster.
And now without volition upon her part there leaped into her consciousness a new and subtly persistent thought.
What about Lester's offer of assistance now?
What about his declaration of love?
Somehow it came back to her—his affection, his personality, his desire to help her, his sympathy, so like that which Brander had shown when Bass was in jail.
Was she doomed to a second sacrifice?
Did it really make any difference?
Wasn't her life a failure already?
She thought this over as she looked at her mother sitting there so silent, haggard, and distraught.
"What a pity," she thought, "that her mother must always suffer!
Wasn't it a shame that she could never have any real happiness?"
"I wouldn't feel so badly," she said, after a time.
"Maybe pa isn't burned so badly as we think.
Did the letter say he'd be home in the morning?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Gerhardt, recovering herself.
They talked more quietly from now on, and gradually, as the details were exhausted, a kind of dumb peace settled down upon the household.
"One of us ought to go to the train to meet him in the morning," said Jennie to Bass.
"I will.
I guess Mrs. Bracebridge won't mind."
"No," said Bass gloomily, "you mustn't.
I can go."
He was sour at this new fling of fate, and he looked his feelings; he stalked off gloomily to his room and shut himself in.
Jennie and her mother saw the others off to bed, and then sat out in the kitchen talking.
"I don't see what's to become of us now," said Mrs. Gerhardt at last, completely overcome by the financial complications which this new calamity had brought about.
She looked so weak and helpless that Jennie could hardly contain herself.
"Don't worry, mamma dear," she said, softly, a peculiar resolve coming into her heart.
The world was wide.
There was comfort and ease in it scattered by others with a lavish hand.
Surely, surely misfortune could not press so sharply but that they could live!
She sat down with her mother, the difficulties of the future seeming to approach with audible and ghastly steps.
"What do you suppose will become of us now?" repeated her mother, who saw how her fanciful conception of this Cleveland home had crumbled before her eyes.
"Why," said Jennie, who saw clearly and knew what could be done, "it will be all right.
I wouldn't worry about it.
Something will happen.
We'll get something."
She realized, as she sat there, that fate had shifted the burden of the situation to her.
She must sacrifice herself; there was no other way.
Bass met his father at the railway station in the morning.
He looked very pale, and seemed to have suffered a great deal.
His cheeks were slightly sunken and his bony profile appeared rather gaunt.
His hands were heavily bandaged, and altogether he presented such a picture of distress that many stopped to look at him on the way home from the station.
"By chops," he said to Bass, "that was a burn I got.
I thought once I couldn't stand the pain any longer. Such pain I had!