the same for Tony and the German wife and the shop. The children
came on Sunday evenings to buy the stick candy, and on week-days
for coal and wood. The servants came to buy oysters for the
larger houses, and to gossip over the counter about their
employers. The little dry woman knitted, and the big man moved
lazily in and out in his red flannel shirt, exchanged politics
with the tailor next door through the window, or lounged into
Mrs. Murphy's bar and drank fiercely. Some of the children grew
up and moved away, and other little girls came to buy candy and
eat pink lagniappe fishes, and the shop still thrived.

One day Tony was ill, more than the mummied foot of gout, or the
wheeze of asthma; he must keep his bed and send for the doctor.

She clutched his arm when he came, and pulled him into the tiny
room.

"Is it--is it anything much, doctor?" she gasped.

AEsculapius shook his head as wisely as the occasion would
permit. She followed him out of the room into the shop.

"Do you--will he get well, doctor?"

AEsculapius buttoned up his frock coat, smoothed his shining hat,
cleared his throat, then replied oracularly,

"Madam, he is completely burned out inside. Empty as a shell,
madam, empty as a shell. He cannot live, for he has nothing to
live on."