“Yes’m.”
She had no more than departed when another voice called from a window of the house next door, “Daisy! Come in right away! Do you hear, Daisy?”
“Yes, mamma.” And Daisy went hurriedly upon the summons.
Laurence was left alone in a world of nightmare. The hated Willamilla howled within his ear and weighed upon him like a house; his arms ached, his head rang; his heart was shaken with the fear of Hossifer; and Willamilla’s grandmother sat upon the curbstone, whistling musically, with no apparent consciousness that there was a busy world about her, or that she had ever a grandchild or a dog. His terrible and mystifying condition began to appear to Laurence as permanent, and the accursed Willamilla an Old-Man-of-the-Sea to be his burden forever. A weariness of life—a sense of the futility of it all—came upon him, and yet he could not even sink down under it.
Then, when there was no hope beneath the sky, out of the alley across the street came a delivering angel—a middle-aged, hilarious coloured man seated in an enfeebled open wagon, and driving a thin gray antique shaped like a horse. Upon the side of the wagon was painted, “P. SkoNe MoVeiNG & DeLiVRys,” and the cheerful driver was probably P. Skone himself.
He brought his wagon to the curb, descended giggling to Willamilla’s grandmother, and by the exertion of a muscular power beyond his appearance, got her upon her feet. She became conscious of his presence, called him her lovin’ Peter, blessed and embraced him, and then, consenting to test the tensile strength of the wagon, reclined upon him while he assisted her into it. After performing this feat, he extended his arms for Willamilla.
“He won’t let me,” Laurence said, swallowing piteously. “He wants me to keep him, an’ he’ll bite me if I——”
“Who go’ bite you, white boy?” the cheerful coloured man inquired. “Hossifer?” Laughing, he turned to the faithful animal, and swept the horizon with a gesture. “Hossifer, you git in nat wagon!”
With the manner of a hunted fugitive, Hossifer instantly obeyed; the man lifted Willamilla’s little vehicle into the wagon, took Willamilla in his arms, and climbed chuckling to the driver’s seat. “Percy,” he said to the antique, “you git up!”
Then this heavenly coloured man drove slowly off with Willamilla, her grandmother, Hossifer and the baby-wagon, while Laurence sank down upon the curbstone, wiped his face upon his polka-dotted sleeve and watched them disappear into the dusty alley. Willamilla was still crying; and to one listener it seemed that she had been crying throughout long, indefinite seasons, and would probably continue to cry forever, or at least until a calamity should arrive to her, in regard to the nature of which he had a certain hope.