She wanted to live so much, for the sake of Mary, her
beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter.

Mrs. Barner did not live to see the whole work of
degeneration, for the end came in the early spring, swift
and sudden and kind.

The doctor's grief for his wife was sincere. He always
referred to her as "my poor Mildred," and never spoke of
her except when comparatively sober.

Mary Barner took up the burden of caring for her father
without question, for she loved him with a great and
pitying love, to which he responded in his best moments.
In the winter she went with him on his drives night and
day, for the fear of what might happen was always in her
heart. She was his housekeeper, his office-girl, his
bookkeeper; she endured all things, loneliness, poverty,
disgrace, without complaining or bitterness.

One day shortly after Mrs. Barner's death big John
Robertson from "the hills" drove furiously down the street
to the doctor's house, and rushed into the office without
ringing the bell. His little boy had been cut with the
mower-knives, and he implored the doctor to come at once.

The doctor sat at his desk, just drunk enough to be
ugly-tempered, and curtly told Mr. Robertson to go straight
to perdition, and as the poor man, wild with excitement,
begged him to come and offered him money, he yawned