“Oh, well, some folks is so well off in money an’ time that they kin afford to be liberal with a pore creature like Margar’t, even ef they didn’t have nothin’ to do with her before she died.”
Miss Prime’s face grew sterner as she replied, “Margar’t Brent wasn’t my kind durin’ life, an’ that I make no bones o’ sayin’ here an’ now; but when she got down on the bed of affliction I done what I could fur her along with the best of you; an’ you, Mandy Warren, that’s seen me here day in an’ day out, ought to be the last one to deny that. Furthermore, I didn’t advise her to leave her husband, as some people did, but I did put in a word an’ help her to work so’s to try to keep her straight afterwards, though it ain’t fur me to be a-braggin’ about what I done, even to offset them that didn’t do nothin’.”
This parting shot told, and Mrs. Warren flared up like a wax light. “It’s a wonder yore old tracts an’ the help you give her didn’t keep her sober sometimes.”
“Ef I couldn’t keep her sober, I wasn’t one o’ them that set an’ took part with her when she was gittin’ drunk.”
“ ’Sh! ’sh!” broke in Mrs. Davis: “ef I was you two I wouldn’t go on that way. Margar’t’s dead an’ gone now, an’ what’s past is past. Pore soul, she had a hard enough time almost to drive her to destruction; but it’s all over now, an’ we ought to put her away as peaceful as possible.”
The women who had all been in such a hurry had waited at the prospect of an altercation, but, seeing it about to blow over, they bethought themselves of their neglected homes and husbands, and passed out behind the still irate Mrs. Warren, who paused long enough in earshot to say, “I hope that spiteful old maid’ll have her hands full.”
The scene within the room which the women had just left was anything but an inviting one. The place was miserably dirty. Margaret had never been a particularly neat housewife, even in her well days. The old rag carpet which disfigured the floor was worn into shreds and blotched with grease, for the chamber was cooking—and dining—as well as sleeping-room. A stove, red with rust, struggled to send forth some heat. The oily black kerosene lamp showed a sickly yellow flame through the grimy chimney.
On a pallet in one corner lay a child sleeping. On the bed, covered with a dingy sheet, lay the stark form out of which the miserable life had so lately passed.
The women opened the blinds, blew out the light, and began performing the necessary duties for the dead.
“Anyhow, let her body go clean before her Maker,” said Miss Hester Prime, severely.
“Don’t be too hard on the pore soul, Miss Hester,” returned Mrs. Davis. “She had a hard time of it. I knowed Margar’t when she wasn’t so low down as in her last days.”
“She oughtn’t never to ’a’ left her husband.”
“Oh, ef you’d ’a’ knowed him as I did, Miss Hester, you wouldn’t never say that. He was a brute: sich beatin’s as he used to give her when he was in liquor you never heerd tell of.”
“That was hard, but as long as he was a husband he was a protection to her name.”
“True enough. Protection is a good dish, but a beatin’s a purty bitter sauce to take with it.”
“I wonder what’s ever become of Brent.”
“Lord knows. No one ain’t heerd hide ner hair o’ him sence he went away from town. People thought that he was a-hangin’ around tryin’ to git a chance to kill Mag after she got her divorce from him, but all at once he packed off without sayin’ a word to anybody. I guess he’s drunk himself to death by this time.”
When they had finished with Margaret, the women set to work to clean up the house. The city physician who had attended the dead woman in her last hours had reported the case for county burial, and the undertaker was momentarily expected.
“We’ll have to git the child up an’ git his pallet out of the way, so the floor kin be swept.”
“A body hates to wake the pore little motherless dear.”
“Perhaps, after all, the child is better off without her example.”
“Yes, Miss Hester, perhaps; but a mother, after all, is a mother.”
“Even sich a one as this?”
“Even sich a one as this.”
Mrs. Davis bent over the child, and was about to lift him, when he stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up of his own accord. He appeared about five years of age. He might have been a handsome child, but hardship and poor feeding had taken away his infantile plumpness, and he looked old and haggard, even beneath the grime on his face. The kindly woman lifted him up and began to dress him.
“I want my mamma,” said the child.
Neither of the women answered: there was something tugging at their heartstrings that killed speech.
Finally the little woman said, “I don’t know ef we did right to let him sleep through it all, but then it was sich a horrible death.”
When she had finished dressing the child, she led him to the bed and showed him his mother’s face. He touched it with his little grimy finger, and then, as if, young as he was, the realization of his bereavement had fully come to him, he burst into tears.
Miss Hester turned her face away, but Mrs. Davis did not try to conceal her tears. She took the boy up in her arms and comforted him the best she could.
“Don’t cry, Freddie,” she said; “don’t cry; mamma’s—restin’. Ef you don’t care, Miss Prime, I’ll take him over home an’ give him some breakfast, an’ leave him with my oldest girl, Sophy. She
