I don't care if he has taken the roof from over our heads.

My child is worth more than anything else.

He'd come if you asked him, he couldn't refuse--you know he couldn't, John Upham!" John Upham's face was white; his forehead and his chin got a curious hardness of outline.

"He won't have a chance," he said, between his teeth.
"Let your own flesh and blood die, then!" cried his wife; but the fierceness was all gone from her voice; she had no power of sustained wrath, so spent was she.

She gave a tearless wail that united with the child's in her lap in a pitiful chord of woe.
"Now, Laury, you know J'rome gave Minnie somethin' that helped her, and she seemed every mite as sick as the baby," her husband said, in a softer voice.