"It seems kind of queer, mebbe, when you say it like that, but it was all simple after I'd been thinkin' about it. Lots of things are queer when you first think about 'em, but after a while you get used to 'em. It's like strangers you meet and get to know after a bit real well."
Jean looked away to the houses crouching on the windswept hill.
"He lived in the same house. He was the only man that ever asked me to go any place with him or tried to kiss me. You see I was twenty-seven then, almost twenty-eight. There was never no talk about marryin'. He went away before Jimmie was born, a long time before. I think he was afraid somebody'd find out. He was always kind of scared of people. He sent some money for awhile and then he stopped. I didn't care about the money. I can always get work, and as soon as Jimmie was old enough to leave, I got a job in another place."
From under the pillow she took a bit of folded newspaper and handed it to Jean. It was a clipping a month old, a condensed account of a political fight in a small town in the southern part of the state. It said that the fight had been won by the adherents of Mayor James H. Martin, who could always be relied on to stand on the side of law and order.
"He always said he was goin' to get into politics some day and he did. I wouldn't bother now, because he ain't had none of the joy of Jimmie, but I haven't more than a few weeks, days mebbe. It's cancer, like mother had and grandmother and Aunt Sarah, and I want to know that Jimmie won't have to go to an institution. He can't be so terrible poor if he's Mayor and he'll do something for Jimmie. Maybe he'll be kind of afraid at first but if you make him promise, he'll keep it. I'll give you some letters he wrote and Jimmie's picture. Will you go?"
Evidently she had used up all her strength, for she lay back now, wasted and white, with her eyes closed. Jean tried to speak and couldn't. It was all so tangled, so thwarted, so stark and bare. It was like the rickety house in which the woman lived, and the parched hills. Jean felt as if the thick dust was choking her. The woman opened her eyes.
"You don't understand very well, do you?"
"No, not very." Jean tried to say she did, but the naked honesty of the other compelled the same from her. "I can understand how you must have been lonely but——"
The woman shook her head. "No, that's just what you don't, or you would understand it all."
Her hands, white from illness, took Jean's. "But you're kind and it don't matter much. I wanted the Doctor because she was awfully good to one of the girls that worked with me once, and when I was thinking of somebody, I remembered her."