“Mrs. Flitch,” lowering her voice to a tragic whisper, “she was talkin’ to herself! ‘Now,’ she says, ‘I kin have children.’ She said them words over and over, ’s if she was glad of the chance.”
“But what did she mean?”
“I d’no, ’m. I been in this world a long time, an’ I ain’t never heerd no ’oman, white or black, say sech things and her husband jest that minute ’sertin’ her. But she’s done it—what she said she’d do. Here’s the child,” she concluded, standing like a black exclamation point beside the baby carriage.
Mrs. Flitch counted her fingers surreptitiously and regarded the infant once more with a sort of expert scientific stare.
“Where is the maid? I understood Mrs. Cutter had a maid?” she asked suddenly, as if she was on the point of subpoenaing a more competent witness.
“She’s gone. Said she didn’t like the looks of it.”
“Of what?”
“I d’no, ’m.”
“Maria,” Mrs. Flitch said after a staccato silence, “you need not tell Mrs. Cutter that I called.”
“La! Mrs. Flitch, hit don’t make no difference. This baby ain’t no secret, whatever else it is. Miss Helen don’t keer who knows she’s got it,” Maria called after her.