She kept on rocking.
“In less’n a month now, I reckon,” she answered.
She had been getting bigger week after week.
Eliza bent over and pulled her skirt up, revealing her leg to the knee, cotton-stockinged and lumpily wadded over with her heavy flannels.
“Whew!” she cried out coyly, noticing that Eugene was staring.
“Turn your head, boy,” she commanded, snickering and rubbing her finger along her nose.
The dull green of rolled banknotes shone through her stockings.
She pulled the bills out.
“Well, I reckon you’ll have to have a little money,” said Eliza, peeling off two tens, and giving them to Mrs. Morgan.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Morgan, taking the money.
“You can stay here until you’re able to work again,” said Eliza.
“I know a good doctor.”
“Mama, in heaven’s name,” Helen fumed.
“Where on earth do you get these people?”
“Merciful God!” howled Gant, “you’ve had ’em all — blind, lame, crazy, chippies and bastards.
They all come here.”
Nevertheless, when he saw Mrs. Morgan now, he always made a profound bow, saying with the most florid courtesy:
“How do you do, madam?”
Aside, to Helen, he said:
“I tell you what — she’s a fine-looking girl.”
“Hahahaha,” said Helen, laughing in an ironic falsetto, and prodding him, “you wouldn’t mind having her yourself, would you?”
“B’God,” he said humorously, wetting his thumb, and grinning slyly at Eliza, “she’s got a pair of pippins.”
Eliza smiled bitterly into popping grease.
“Hm!” she said disdainfully.
“I don’t care how many he goes with.
There’s no fool like an old fool.
You’d better not be too smart.
That’s a game two can play at.”
“Hahahahaha!” laughed Helen thinly, “she’s mad now.”
Helen took Mrs. Morgan often to Gant’s and cooked great meals for her.
She also brought her presents of candy and scented soap from town.
They called in McGuire at the birth of the child.
From below Eugene heard the quiet commotion in the upstairs room, the low moans of the woman, and finally a high piercing wail.
Eliza, greatly excited, kept kettles seething with hot water constantly over the gas flames of the stove.
From time to time she rushed upstairs with a boiling kettle, descending a moment later more slowly, pausing from step to step while she listened attentively to the sounds in the room.
“After all,” said Helen, banging kettles about restlessly in the kitchen, “what do we know about her?
Nobody can say she hasn’t got a husband, can they?
They’d better be careful!
People have no right to say those things,” she cried out irritably against unknown detractors.
It was night.
Eugene went out on to the veranda.
The air was frosty, clear, not very cool. Above the black bulk of the eastern hills, and in the great bowl of the sky, far bright stars were scintillant as jewels.
The light burned brightly in neighborhood houses, as bright and as hard as if carved from some cold gem.
Across the wide yard-spaces wafted the warm odor of hamburger steak and fried onions.
Ben stood at the veranda rail, leaning upon his cocked leg, smoking with deep lung inhalations.
Eugene went over and stood by him.
They heard the wail upstairs.
Eugene snickered, looking up at the thin ivory mask.
Ben lifted his white hand sharply to strike him, but dropped it with a growl of contempt, smiling faintly.
Far before them, on the top of Birdseye, faint lights wavered in the rich Jew’s castle.