“Why, what’s wrong with these?” said Eliza.
She pressed them with her fingers.
“Why, pshaw!” she said.
“There’s nothing wrong with them.
All shoes are a little tight at first.
It won’t hurt him a bit.”
But he had to give up at the end of six weeks.
The hard leather did not stretch, his feet hurt more every day.
He limped about more and more painfully until he planted each step woodenly as if he were walking on blocks.
His feet were numb and dead, sore on the palms.
One day, in a rage, Ben flung him down and took them off.
It was several days before he began to walk with ease again.
But his toes that had grown through boyhood straight and strong were pressed into a pulp, the bones gnarled, bent and twisted, the nails thick and dead.
“It does seem a pity to throw those good shoes away,” sighed Eliza.
But she had strange fits of generosity.
He didn’t understand.
A girl came down to Altamont from the west.
She was from Sevier, a mountain town, she said.
She had a big brown body, and black hair and eyes of a Cherokee Indian.
“Mark my words,” said Gant. “That girl’s got Cherokee blood in her somewhere.”
She took a room, and for days rocked back and forth in a chair before the parlor fire.
She was shy, frightened, a little sullen — her manners were country and decorous.
She never spoke unless she was spoken to.
Sometimes she was sick and stayed in bed.
Eliza took her food then, and was extremely kind to her.
Day after day the girl rocked back and forth, all through the stormy autumn.
Eugene could hear her large feet as rhythmically they hit the floor, ceaselessly propelling the rocker.
Her name was Mrs. Morgan.
One day as he laid large crackling lumps upon the piled glowing mass of coals, Eliza entered the room.
Mrs. Morgan rocked away stolidly.
Eliza stood by the fire for a moment, pursing her lips reflectively, and folding her hands quietly upon her stomach.
She looked out the window at the stormy sky, the swept windy bareness of the street.
“I tell you what,” she said, “it looks like a hard winter for the poor folks.”
“Yes’m,” said Mrs. Morgan sullenly. She kept on rocking.
Eliza was silent a moment longer.
“Where’s your husband?” she asked presently.
“In Sevier,” Mrs. Morgan said.
“He’s a railroad man.”
“What’s that, what’s that?” said Eliza quickly, comically.
“A railroad man, you say?” she inquired sharply.
“Yes’m.”
“Well, it looks mighty funny to me he hasn’t been in to see you,” said Eliza, with enormous accusing tranquillity.
“I’d call it a pretty poor sort of man who’d act like that.”
Mrs. Morgan said nothing.
Her tar-black eyes glittered in fireflame.
“Have you got any money?” said Eliza.
“No’m,” said Mrs. Morgan.
Eliza stood solidly, enjoying the warmth, pursing her lips.
“When do you expect to have your baby?” said Eliza suddenly.
Mrs. Morgan said nothing for a moment.