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Only the broken sobbing of the woman in the little shed-room came faint and low on old Nance's ears. She slipped from the kitchen into the shadows of a tree near the house and listened until the sobbing ceased. She crept close to the shed and stood silent and ghost-like beside its daubed walls.
Hervey had often warned his sons against making too much of a companion of old Nance's grandson, for hitherto no one had succeeded in taming him clergyman, schoolmaster, kind-hearted ladies of the country-side had all tried their hands at it and failed. Bob was now thirteen, and did not even know his letters!
He simply kicked out behind, and before she could get up had thrust one of his half-drowned victims into the neck of her frock, and the clammy-dead feel of it and its pitiful screaming set her shuddering for months whenever she thought of it. But now and again her tormentor overpassed the bounds and got his reward to Nance's immediate satisfaction but subsequent increased tribulation.
"All right, Rich," says Harve, an' out they walked, steady, an' thar was two shoots shot, an' Rich an' Harve both drapped, an' in ten minutes they was stretched out on Nance's bed an' Nance was a-lopin' away fer the yarb doctor. The gal nussed 'em both plum faithful. Rich didn't hev much to say, an' Harve didn't hev much to say. Nance was sorter quiet, an' Nance's mammy, ole Nance, jes grinned.
No girl of her youth and beauty could look death in the face without a tremor. No woman in her right senses could see the body of her dead husband lying there red and yet quivering without a sign. It was more than even Nance's nerves could endure. She lowered the knife and peered into the girl's set face and glanced quickly about the room. Could she have called help? Was the house surrounded?
I couldn't help thinking ever so many times of old Nance's story of the poor boy crossing it that winter night. I do so want to hear some more of her stories. Of course we can't stop at the cottage to-day, but don't you think we might next Wednesday perhaps?
And to Nance's untold chagrin she found that she could not. The moment the music started, it seemed to get into her tripping feet, her swinging arms, her nodding head; and every extra step and unnecessary gesture that she made evoked a storm from the director. Just when his irritation was at his height, Reeser joined him from the wings. "Here's a howdy-do!" he exclaimed.
Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance's return, proposed for the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp.
Purdy took them into the sitting-room where a delicate-looking man sat in a wheel-chair, carving something from a piece of wood. Nance's quick eyes took in every detail of the bright, commonplace room; its gay, flowered carpet and chintz curtains, its "fruit pieces" in wide, gold frames, and its crocheted tidies presented a new ideal of elegance.
The light by which she steered had suddenly gone out, and she could no longer distinguish the warning coast lights from the harbor lights of home. But Mac had not come at Christmas, neither had he come in the summer, and Nance's emotional storm was succeeded by an equally intolerable calm.
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