"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring itself.

"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'

"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....

"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me about the medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we was all the first settlers of somewheres.

"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind of hurt me to see him doing nothing—that's one of the parts about sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she done—and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief double. And it's like working or playing around was a kind of life.... The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.

"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it was about the Cadoza kitchen.

"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay alive in a kitchen like that?'

"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not knowing it's time to stop.'

"'But the dirt—' she says.

"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they are emergin'.'

"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.

"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples—so be you plant 'em.'

"But the Cadoza kitchen was fearful. When we come through it, Mis' Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the floor wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy, because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first brought Insley in to see him.

"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay you, Mr. Insley.'

"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.

"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out angular.

"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight of Yet. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull; unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of habit—and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the struggle.

"'Is there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?' says Robin.

"'Is there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick will, tainted blood, ruined body—to what were we all saving Chris? Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.

"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'

"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon, making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....

" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows. In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure of long days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks, of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the plain safety of the unchanging, of going along and going along and leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of the material that is cheap and abundant—like Chris....

"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way is best. Mebbe she knows best when to let them die off.'

"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.

"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.

"She nodded at him.

"'What for?' he asks.

"'Just loving,' she answered.

"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light, and then he stopped beside Robin—as gentle as a woman over a plant—and asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.

"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to hear—the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the sagging Brussels couch.

"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take him in at the least change—but you must go back at once.'

"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them wanted to stay with Chris.

"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about the little Cadoza boy—all that while the Personal, the Personal, like a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.

"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant everything to Chris—and to me.'

"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being dear.

"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'

"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come, and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something—I donno whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.

"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis' Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr. Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.

"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers—Mis' Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him. I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him, severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin' pickle, for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same river to cross.'

"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse a sick-bed, I always think—and so she sort of hung around a minute, sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in front of me and with what was behind me, the awful good-byness of things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I run right down to them two.

"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you—then I want you to know it. And it's true. You both—oh, I donno,' I says, 'what it is—but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person, too....'

"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody know something while then was then.

"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.

"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'

"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back into the cottage together, and the Proudfit automobile started steaming back to Proudfit House without her.

"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.

"'Come with Robin,' she said.

"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked up in Robin's face, piteous.

"'Did my daddy go out?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'

"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first, you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'

"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there by him, fixing him a little something to take.

"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps—'

"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee on the chair beside the bed.

"'Hello—my nice daddy,' Chris says, in his little high voice, and smiles adorable. 'I—I—I was waitin' for you all this while.'

"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It didn't looked used, somehow—it looked all sort of bare and barren, and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway, new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was young—young and burning—but there was the man's face, all spoiled and done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.

"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'

"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.

"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the boy's head.

"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'

"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a minute. And then it lit up a little—he didn't smile or change expression, but his look lit up some.

"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a good home. I—I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.

"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You—you—you come in our house, too,' he says.

"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm—goin' somewheres else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you should hev a good home. I'm glad—if you've got it. It's nicer than bein' with me—ain't it? Ain't it?'

"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand patting and pulling at his father's hand.

"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.

"At that his father smiled—and that was the first real, real look that had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.

"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me—had me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him—about growin' up. I'm glad you're goin' to.'

"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.

"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you—I had that hot ice-cream an'—an'—an' tea on a litty wagon....'

"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man opened his eyes, wide and dark.

"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh—God....'

"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.

"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.

"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you forget about his throat, will you?' he says. 'It—gets—sore—awful—easy....'

"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him nor Chris thought of kissing each other—like neither one had brought the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked him—just like something away back in him knew how, without being brought up to know.

"He knew how to cry, though, without no bringing up, like folks do. As Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts, crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so, while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come out and shut the door—ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.

"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a sudden he put up his face.

"'Robin,' he says, 'did—did my daddy leave me a letter?'

"'A letter?' she repeated.

"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church steps.'

"'No—why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you know.'

"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.

"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.

"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell him what to do.

"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.

"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big enough to know.'

"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost old—as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through a child.

"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some arrangements—if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the word was spelt different and stiffer—and we was setting there in that sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their thick, strange ring, and his dark, kind of even face was like some fancy picture of a knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well, or better.

"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've been frantic with anxiety.'

"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious.... 'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'

He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she told him was hers. I got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.

"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to drink'd go good—with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'

"Alex started to say something—heaven knows what—but Robin went right straight up to Mis' Cadoza—and afterwards I thought back to how Robin didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.

"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'

"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed, and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.

"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the pan-cakes. Hurry on—you're keeping back our supper.'

"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door. Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a kind of pretty near dignity.

"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had happened.

"'My—my—my daddy——' he says.

"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child, Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for to-night! For our to-night....'

"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.

"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too late to mend it now.'

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