“Yer cudden’t find anybody, les’ yer looked sharp. An’ youse er that changed an’ sollumn lookin’ an’ big-eyed, no one’d know yer.”
“But you knew me,” with a grateful little smile.
Patsey grinned and rolled his eyes.
“I was a-layin’ fer ye.”
“You can take me up to Cent’l Park, Patsey. I’d like to go so much.”
“That’s the talk, now! So I will. We’ll all go. We’ll have a reg’lar persesh, a stunner, an’ take our lunch, like the ’ristocrockery!”
Dil did brighten up a good deal. Baby kisses helped. She was starving for love, such as boys did not know how to give. She used to take Nelly out walking, and imagine her her very own. The mother instinct was strong in Dil.
Having the washing done did ease up the work; though one would have considered it no sinecure to feed five hungry boys. Now and then her head would ache, and occasionally something inside of her would flutter up in her throat, as it had when Bess died, and she would stretch out her hands to clasp some warm human support, her whole body in a shiver of vague terror.
If John Travis would only come. She could not disbelieve in him. Last autumn in the moment of desperate despair he had come, bringing such a waft of joy and satisfaction. There were so many things she wanted to ask him. She began to hope, in a vague way, that the Lord had come for Bess, for she wanted her in that beautiful heaven. But the mystery was too great for her untrained mind. And there intruded upon her thought, the horror of that moment when she knew Bess was dead.
The hot weather was very trying. Hemmed in on all sides by tall buildings, her own room so small, with a window on a narrow space hardly six inches from the brick wall of the next house, there was little chance for air. The boys seemed to sleep through anything.