“No,” Sidney began, and at the same time he felt frightened at his own vigorous eagerness, “you should trust him to me . . . I mean I am the one to do it, Irene. It’s my duty, as he is my charge now . . .”

“But he isn’t perhaps quite at ease with you yet . . . I’m so troubled he . . . put his teeth on you.”

“No, no, don’t you see,” he tried to keep down his own eloquence, “it was after all not meant to hurt me . . . I’m glad in fact that . . .”

“Let us sit on a little before we go up,” Irene suggested now in the face of his growing eagerness.

“As you wish. Of course.”

They went into the interior now of the parlor and took seats directly in front of one another in two heavy wooden chairs with sharp brass ornaments adorning their tops.

She began again: “It’s a very trying thing to get his bowels to move now.” She forced these words out. “He nearly died last winter. They feared in fact obstruction. . . . He neither wants to eat . . . or to void.” She used this “hospital” word in some dismay, unclear as to what word might be appropriate for Sidney.

“He will be better under my care,” he spoke almost boastfully.

“I am sure of that, Sidney.”

Gareth was standing when they entered his room. He at once rushed toward Sidney and placed himself protectively behind the latter, and then cried out in his hoarse animal-­like voice, but this time framing the voice into words: “Don’t let her touch me, keep her away!”

“Gareth, Gareth!” came the anguished but also now angry voice of his mother, while Sidney had to call into question his own recollection, for he had thought Gareth never spoke, and now he had spoken as clear as could be, although the actual sound of the words themselves were so little like that of a human being, quivers went again up and down his spine.

Sidney held his charge’s hand, and could feel the rapid pulse coming and going under his fingertips.

“Gareth, listen to me,” she began again. “The only reason we hurt you the last time was because we were too nervous, too afraid in fact of hurting you. . . . Today, Sidney will do it all for you . . . If you will only allow him to, I know that in his hands you will feel no pain . . . So please, my dear . . .”

Meanwhile Mrs. Vaisey had spread out thick sheets over the bed, had pulled out a chamberpot of huge size from under it, and a tube of salve, and an enema apparatus.

Gareth emerged now from behind Sidney’s protection, and stared at the ongoing preparations.

“I have already gone to the bathroom, Mother, and you know it,” he spoke clearly and collectedly.