"He'd better be off about his work, the idle loafer," she said to herself. But aloud she said, "She's a-feelin' pretty poorly," and held the door gingerly open for him to pass through.
He had come into the house from the midst of a blue October afternoon, still, sweet, and sunny, and with just enough freshness of chill in the air to make one take deep breaths and step lightly along and whistle the end of a tune. He passed into a room where the air was chokingly hot and heavy with the smell of sickness and of many breaths. The one small window was tightly closed; and the green paper blind, full of white creases and pinholes, was drawn three quarters down.
Aunt Abigail sat knitting on one side of the bed. On the other side Aunt Maggie Slatten dozed ponderously in the rocking chair. She wakened as Jabez came into the room and sat bolt upright looking at him with eyes full of hostility.
Aunt Sally, after dropping some more pieces of wood into the little sheet iron stove, came and resumed her seat on Aunt Abigail's side of the bed. She was nearest to the window and she had in her lap a bit of patchwork that she was piecing together.
In the middle of the big bed, Judith's face was very white in its frame of black hair. Her thin body hardly raised the patchwork quilt. Heavy and somber the tall walnut headboard rose behind her. In her wasted youth she looked more ready for the grave than any of the old duennas about her. As Jabez looked he had a vision of her as he had seen her how few years before in the walnut bed, fresh, gay, and rosy after the birth of her first child.
She opened her eyes as he came toward her and greeted him with a shadow of the old flashing smile.
The three old women glanced at each other with meaningful looks. After all they had done for her, she had not smiled once for them.
"Waal, Judy," was all he could say, as he stood awkwardly by the bed, his cap in his hands. The darkness oppressed him, the stinking heat of the room made his eyeballs ache. He felt the three pairs of vixenish old eyes fastened upon him with dark suspicion and cold hostility.
"Waal, Judy, I hope you'll git well right quick," he said after an awkward pause and turned and went out of the house. As he passed over the ridge and down on the other side, he neither whistled nor sang, and the weight of his great shoulders seemed to be dragging them to the earth.