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Updated: May 12, 2025
For so long the poor child "couldn't eat no thin'," and when at last Minta's appetite returned, her loving black nurse would give her anything she wanted, and if the fever hadn't hopelessly damaged the little one's digestive glands, Mammy Lou's unfailing "l'il snacks for her honey-chile" would have completed the wreckage. At first the trouble was not noticed. Minta rarely spoke of suffering.
"I will look after them," said Marcella, "and I will do the best I can for you. Now I will go to Mrs. Hurd." Minta Hurd was sitting in a corner of the outhouse on the clay floor, her head leaning against the wall. The face was turned upward, the eyes shut, the mouth helplessly open.
"Waal," drawled the semblance of the setter from deep in the clare-obscure, "Watt war jes a fool from lack o' sense." "That kind o' fool can't be cured," said another of the players. Then he sharply adjuxed the dealer. "Look out what ye be doin'! Ye hev gimme two kyerds." "'Gene Barker will git ter marry Minta Elladine Biggs now, I reckon," suggested the man on the anvil.
The mother and wife felt herself shy, intimidated. The tears came back to her brown eyes. When Miss Boyce had gone, Minta Hurd went to the fire and put it together, sighing all the time, her face still red and miserable. The door opened and her husband came in. He carried some potatoes in his great earth-stained hands. "You're goin' to put that bit of hare on?
I just laughed at the look ov 'im. 'I'll have the law on yer for assault an' battery, yer damned miscalculatin' brute! says I to him 'why don't yer get that boy there to teach yer your business? An' off I walked. Don't you be afeared 'ee'll never lay hands on me!" But Minta was sore afraid, and went on talking and lamenting while she made the tea. He took little heed of her.
For four years little Minta thrived and gave promise of bringing many joys to this home which knew no shadow but the father's periodic "business trips" to Charleston. Mammy Lou was her slave, and even Georgia, who had her own way so much that she was far from unselfish, asked, at times, to "take care" of her dainty sister, and would let her play with some of her things without protest.
An' they do say in the cove that Minta Elladine Biggs hev gin him the mitten, anyhow, on account of his gamesome ways, playin' kyerds, a-bet-tin' his money, drinkin' apple-jack, an' sech." The newly constituted ghost roused himself with great vitality as if to retort floutingly; but as he turned, his jaw suddenly fell; his eyes widened with a ghastly distension.
As they neared the Hurds' old cottage, which was now empty and to be pulled down, a sudden look of disgust crossed Marcella's face. "Did I tell you my news of Minta Hurd?" she said. No; Mary had heard nothing. So Marcella told the grotesque and ugly news, as it seemed to her, which had reached her at Amalfi.
It was the very complexity and puzzle of the character that made its force. So with a reddened cheek, she lost herself a few minutes in this pleasant sense of a new wealth in life; and was only roused from the dreamy running to and fro of thought by the appearance of Minta, who came to clear away the tea. "Why, it is close on the half-hour!" cried Marcella, springing up. "Where are my things?"
"'Gene don't keer much fur ye ter be alive nohow, Watt Wyatt," one of the others suggested tactlessly, "'count o' Minta Elladine Biggs." Eugene Barker's off-hand phrase was incongruous with his sudden gravity and his evident rancor as he declared: "I ain't carin' fur sech ez Watt Wyatt.
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