“Yes,” Miss Reba said.
“I’m supporting four, in a Arkansaw home now.
Not mine, though.”
She lifted the tankard and looked into it, oscillating it gently.
She set it down again.
“It better not been born at all,” she said.
“None of them had.”
She rose and came toward him, moving heavily, and stood above him with her harsh breath.
She put her hand on his head and tilted his face up.
“You aint lying to me, are you?” she said, her eyes piercing and intent and sad.
“No, you aint.”
She released him.
“Wait here a minute.
I’ll see.”
She went out.
He heard her speak to Minnie in the hall, then he heard her toil up the stairs.
He sat quietly as she had left him.
The room contained a wooden bed, a painted screen, three over-stuffed chairs, a wall safe.
The dressing-table was littered with toilet articles tied in pink satin bows.
The mantel supported a wax lily beneath a glass bell; above it, draped in black, the photograph of a meek-looking man with an enormous moustache.
On the walls hung a few lithographs of spurious Greek scenes, and one picture done in tatting.
Horace rose and went to the door.
Minnie sat in a chair in the dim hall.
“Minnie,” he said,
“I’ve got to have a drink.
A big one.”
He had just finished it when Minnie entered again.
“She say fer you to come on up,” she said.
He mounted the stairs.
Miss Reba waited at the top.
She led the way up the hall and opened a door into a dark room.
“You’ll have to talk to her in the dark,” she said.
“She wont have no light.”
Light from the hall fell through the door and across the bed.
“This aint hers,” Miss Reba said.
“Wouldn’t even see you in her room at all.
I reckon you better humor her until you find out what you want.”
They entered.
The light fell across the bed, upon a motionless curving ridge of bedclothing, the general tone of the bed unbroken.
She’ll smother, Horace thought.
“Honey,” Miss Reba said.
The ridge did not move.
“Here he is, honey.
Long as you’re all covered up, let’s have some light.
Then we can close the door.”
She turned the light on.
“She’ll smother,” Horace said.
“She’ll come out in a minute,” Miss Reba said.
“Go on.
Tell her what you want.