Jimmy (Hesitatingly climbs into her lap, but presently snuggles down and sighs audibly from sheer content; Rachel starts to bind up her hair): Ma Rachel, don’t please! I like your hair like that. You’re—you’re pretty. I like to feel of it; and it smells like—like—oh!—like a barn.
Rachel: My! how complimentary! I like that. Like a barn, indeed!
Jimmy: What’s “complimentry”?
Rachel: Oh! saying nice things about me. (Pinching his cheek and laughing) That my hair is like a barn, for instance.
Jimmy (Stoutly): Well, that is “complimentary.” It smells like hay—like the hay in the barn you took me to, one day, last summer. ’Member?
Rachel: Yes honey.
Jimmy (After a brief pause): Ma Rachel!
Rachel: Well?
Jimmy: Tell me a story, please. It’s “story-time,” now, isn’t it?
Rachel: Well, let’s see. (They both look into the fire for a space; beginning softly) Once upon a time, there were two, dear, little boys, and they were all alone in the world. They lived with a cruel, old man and woman, who made them work hard, very hard—all day, and beat them when they did not move fast enough, and always, every night, before they went to bed. They slept in an attic on a rickety, narrow bed, that went screech! screech! whenever they moved. And, in summer, they nearly died with the heat up there, and in winter, with the cold. One wintry night, when they were both weeping very bitterly after a particularly hard beating, they suddenly heard a pleasant voice saying: “Why are you crying, little boys?” They looked up, and there, in the moonlight, by their bed, was the dearest, little old lady. She was dressed all in gray, from the peak of her little pointed hat to her little, buckled shoes. She held a black cane much taller than her little self. Her hair fell about her ears in tiny, grey corkscrew curls, and they bobbed about as she moved. Her eyes were black and bright—as bright as—well, as that lovely, white light there. No, there! And her cheeks were as red as the apple I gave you yesterday. Do you remember?