ath; then speaks, in a whisper.
''Dear girl, don''t you know? Ain''t I said, a hundred times—?''
I begin to weep—in frustration, exhaustion. ''Why will you say it?'' I cry, through my tears. ''Why will you? Isn''t it enough, to have got me here? Why must you also love me? Why must you smother and torment me, with your grasping after my heart?''
I have raised myself up; but the cry takes the last of my strength and soon, I fall back. She does not speak. She watches. She waits, until I have grown still. Then she turns her head and tilts it. I think, from the curve of her cheek, that she is smiling.
''How quiet the house is,'' she says, ''now so many infants are gone! Ain''t it?'' She turns back to me. I hear her swallow. ''Did I tell you, dear girl,'' she says softly, ''that I once bore an infant of my own, that died? Round about the time that that lady, Sue''s mother, came?'' She nods. ''So I said. So you''ll hear it told, round here, if you ask. Babies do die. Who''d think that queer . . .?''
There is something to her voice. I begin to shake. She feels it, and reaches again to stroke my tangled head. ''There, now. Hush, now. You are quite safe, now . . .'' Then the stroking stops. She has caught up a lock of hair. She smiles again. ''Funny thing,'' she says, in a different tone, ''about your hair. Your eye I did suppose brown, and your colour white, and your waist and hands I knew would be