His happiest hours were those when he fancied the children were with him.
"Gently! gently!" he would say; "there is room for everybody. This knee
is for Gussie Gorman, this one for Joe, because they are the smallest,
you know. Now are you ready?" And then he would whisper fairy stories,
smiling at the ceiling, and making feeble gestures with his wasted old
hands.
The end came one day after he had lain for hours in a stupor. He stirred
suddenly and asked for his violin.
"I must go--to the--theater, Nancy," he murmured. "I--do not want--to
be--a--burden."
They laid the instrument in his arms, and his fingers groped feebly over
the strings; then his chin sank into its old accustomed place, and a
great light dawned in his eyes. Mr. Demry, who was used to seeing
invisible things, had evidently caught the final vision.
That night, worn with nursing and full of grief for the passing of her
old friend, Nance threw a coat about her and slipped out on the terrace.
Above her, nebulous stars were already appearing, and their twinkling
was answered by responsive gleams in the city below. Against the velvety
dusk two tall objects towered in the distance, the beautiful Gothic
spire of the cathedral, and the tall, unseemly gas pipe of Clarke's
Bottle Factory. Between them, under a haze of smoke and grime, lay
Calvary Alley.
"I don't know which is worse," thought Nance fiercely, "to be down there
in the mess, fighting and struggling and suffering to get the things you
want, or up here with the mummies who haven't got anything left to wish
for.
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