He was laid out carefully and fanned and fussed over till his mother drove them all away.
"Now, just rest," she said.

"It's an hour to supper time yet!" And she covered him with her latest completed afghan, gathering up and carrying away the incomplete one and its tumultuous constituents.
He was glad of the quiet, the fresh, sweet air, the smell of flowers instead of the smell of molasses and cheese, soap and sulphur matches.
But the headache did not stop, nor the worry that caused it.

He loved his mother, he loved his sisters, he loved their home, but he did not love the grocery business which had fallen so unexpectedly upon him at his father's death, nor the load of debt which fell with it.
That they need never have had so large a "place" to "keep up" did not occur to him.

He had lived there most of his life, and it was home.

That the expenses of running the household were three times what they needed to be, he did not know.