OWEN CAREY
her for a while she would probably return to a normal condition. What he needed was two or three rooms in which she could have privacy, and quiet, and housework to occupy her. It would not cost much. He could earn more if he worked harder. He had done it before.
He had done it when he first learned that his mother was dead. In a fit of repentance he had begun to work and save, so that he might be able to take her from whatever pauper's grave she had been buried in and put up some sort of tombstone for her in a decent cemetery. He had saved a hundred dollars, and then he had been balked by the difficulty of writing, as a stranger, or anonymously, to the asylum—or where else?—to have the thing done for him. And, being the sort of person whom practical difficulties appal, he had continued living with the intention of doing what he never made any attempt to do. The money was still in a Chicago bank, untouched, waiting. Well, he could make a vicarious reparation to his mother by using the hundred dollars to rescue this girl from his mother's fate. A hundred dollars, with what he could earn, would carry them for a year at least. He fell asleep, easy in his mind.
11
And he awoke, next morning, to the responsibilities and the way of life that made him and his novels what they are.
[ 27 ]
