“Ann,” said Julie Anspacher, suddenly lifting the muff over her hands, “did you ever see two such big horses before?” The child turned its head with brightness, and bending down tried to see between the driver’s arms. Then she smiled.
“Are they yours?” she whispered.
Julie Anspacher took in a deep breath, stretching the silk of her waist across her breasts. “No,” she answered, “they are not mine, but we have two—bigger—blacker.”
“Can I see them?”
“Oh, yes, you shall see them. Don’t be ridiculous.”
The child shrank back into herself, clutching nervously at her muff. Julie Anspacher returned to her reflections.
It was almost five years since she had been home. Five years before in just such an Autumn the doctors had given her six months to live. One lung gone and the other going. They called it sometimes the White Death, and, sometimes, the love disease. She coughed a little, remembering, and the child at her side coughed too in echo, and the driver, puckering his forehead, reflected that Mrs. Anspacher was not cured.
She was thirty-nine—she should have died at thirty-four. In those five years Paytor had seen her five times, coming in over fourteen hours of the rails at Christmas. He cursed the doctors, called them fools.
The house appeared dull white between the locust trees, and the smoke, the same lazy Autumn smoke, rose in a still column straight into the obliterating day.
The driver reined in the horses until their foaming jaws struck against their harness, and with a quick bound Julie Anspacher jumped the side of the cart, the short modish tails of her jacket dancing above her hips. She turned around and thrusting her black gloved hands under the child, lifted her out. A dog barked. She began walking the ascent toward the house.