“De ghosties,” she whispered; “dey been worriting dat chile ever’ chance dey [p48] git. I hear ’em! Dey wait till I take a nap of sleep, den dey comes sneakin’ in to pester her. She says dey ain’t but one, but I hears heaps ob ’em, some ob ’em so little dey kin climb onder de crack in de door.”
“Look a-here, Aunt Tish,” said Mr. Opp, sternly, “don’t you ever talk a word of this foolishness to her again. Not one word, do you hear?”
“Yas, sir; dat’s what Mr. Moore allays said, an’ I don’t talk to her ’bout hit, I don’t haf to. She done knows I know. I been livin’ heah goin’ on forty years, sence ’fore you was borned, an’ you can’t fool me, chile; no, sir, dat you can’t.”
“Well, you must go to bed now,” said Mr. Opp, looking up at the clock and seeing that it was half-past something though he did not know what.
“I never goes to baid when I stays here,” announced Aunt Tish; “I sets up in de kitchen an’ sleeps. I’s skeered dat chile run away; she ’low she gwine to some day. Her paw ketched her oncet [p49] gittin’ in a boat down on de river-bank. She ain’t gwine, while I’s here, no sir-ee! I never leaves her in de daytime an’ her paw never leaves her at night, dat is, when he’s livin’.”
After she had gone, Mr. Opp ascended the stairway, and entered the room above. A candle sputtered on the table, and in its light he saw the wide, four-poster bed that had been his mother’s, and in it the frail figure of little Miss Kippy. Her hair lay loose upon the pillow, and on her sleeping face, appealing in its helplessness, was a smile of perfect peace. The new doll lay on the table beside the candle, but clasped tightly in her arms was the coat of many checks.
For a moment Mr. Opp stood watching her, then he drew his shirt-sleeve quickly across his eyes. As he turned to descend, his new shoes creaked painfully and, after he had carefully removed them, he tiptoed down, passed through the sitting-room and out upon the porch, where he sank down on the step and dropped his head on his arms.
[p50]
The night was very still, save for the croaking of a bullfrog, and the incessant scraping of a cedar-tree against the corner of the roof. From across the river, faint sparks of light shone out from cabin windows, and, below, a moving light now and then told of a passing scow. Once a steamboat slipped weirdly out of the darkness, sparkling with lights, and sending up faint sounds of music; but before the waves from the wheel had ceased to splash on the bank below, she was swallowed up in the darkness, leaving lonesomeness again.
Mr. Opp sat staring out into the night, outwardly calm, but inwardly engaged in a mortal duel. The aggressive Mr. Opp of the gorgeous raiment and the seal ring, the important man of business, the ambitious financier, was in deadly combat with the insignificant Mr. Opp, he of the shirt-sleeves and the wilted pompadour, the delicate, sensitive, futile Mr. Opp who was incapable of everything but the laying down of his life for the sake of another.
[p51]
A dull line of light hovered on the horizon, and gradually the woods on the opposite shore took shape, then the big river itself, gray and shimmering, with streaks on the water where a snag broke the swift current.