“And she does not hear from him?”
“Not as I knows of. Miss Helen left ’reckly after he did, and she was gone five months. But she wa’n’t wid him. We used to git letters from her from a place in Ca’lina.”
“Which, North or South Carolina?”
“I don’t know, ’m. Buck read the letters.”
“This is a strange baby,” Mrs. Flitch announced grimly.
Maria wiped her eyes. She was working herself up to an emotional pitch by some act of memory. Mrs. Flitch waited for the revelation she knew must be coming.
“I’m goin’ to tell you all I know about how come dis baby. Not as it kin explain somethings, like her having black hair and being dark complected, but it’s all I know,” she began.
“Go on.”
“After Mr. Cutter was gone, Miss Helen laid in bed three days. She jest laid there, white as a corpse, with her eyes open. She didn’t shed no tears and she didn’t say anything, mor’n for me to hand her a glass of water or somethin’ like that. Then one mornin’ she hops out of bed, dresses herself an’ goes downtown to the bank. While she was dressin’ I comes to the door to fetch her slippers, which I’d been polishin’ in the kitchen.” Maria left off and rolled her eyes lugubriously, as if such a tongue as she had could not reveal the rest.
“Go on; what happened?”