It was mean to speak ill of the absent, especially when the absent one was Ethie, who had written, "In fancy I put my arms around your neck and kiss your dear, kind face." Andy deemed himself a monster of ingratitude when he recalled these lines and remembered that of her who penned them he had said, "She was some to blame." He took it all back to himself, and tried to exonerate Ethie entirely, though it was hard work to do so where he saw how broken, and stunned, and crushed his brother was, and how little he realized what was passing around him.
"He don't know much more than I do," was Andy's mental comment, when to his question, "What shall we do next ?" Richard replied, in a maudlin kind of way, "Yes, that is a very proper course.

I leave it entirely to you." Andy felt that a great deal was depending upon himself, and he tried to meet the emergency.

Seeing how Richard continued to shiver, and how cold he was, he persuaded him to lie down upon the bed, and piling the blankets upon him, made such a fire as he said to himself, "would roast a common ox"; then, when Hal Clifford came to the door and knocked, he kept him out, with that "Dick had been broke of his rest, and was tryin' to make it up." But this state of things could not last long.

Richard was growing ill, and talking so strangely withal, that Andy began to feel the necessity of having somebody there beside himself; "some of the wimmen folks, who knew what to do, for I'm no better than a settin' hen," he said.
Very naturally his thoughts turned to his mother as the proper person to come, "though Melinda Jones was the properest of the two.

There was snap to her, and she would not go to pitchin' in to Ethie." Accordingly, the next mail carried to Melinda Jones a note from Andy, which was as follows: "MISS MELINDA JONES: Dear Madam--We found the letters Ethie writ, one to me, and one to Dick, and Dick's was too much for him.