With alacrity Judith helped Aunt Maggie on with her dolman, and even knelt down on the floor and put on her overshoes. Seeing her at last really prepared to leave, she felt of a sudden quite kindly toward her visitor and suffered a twinge of shame at having treated her so coldly. She smiled in a cordial and friendly way as she ushered Aunt Maggie out of the house.
But when the door had closed behind her visitor the smile vanished and a look of empty weariness settled upon her face. It seemed as though Aunt Maggie still sat in the room and with her all the other stuffy old women of the neighborhood. Their prying eyes leered at her out of the gloomy corners. From their presence issued a stifling and oppressive aura.
When Jerry came in he found her sitting slackly in the old rocking chair, her long hands hanging limp like dead things.
CHAPTER XII
After the baby's birth the routine of life in the little house in the hollow fell along quite different lines. Judith no longer went with Jerry to the field to hoe or top tobacco. The baby could not be left alone in the house. Judith sometimes wished to leave him for an hour or two so that she could give Jerry a little help when work was pressing. But he would not hear of it.
"S'pose he took a fit while you was gone, Judy. Or s'pose a rat should come."
"But he don't never have fits. An' we hain't got rats this summer. They're all over to Hat's place since that big yaller cat come here."
"But sumpin might happen to him, Judy. You can't never tell. I'll make shift to git along. If anything happened to him we wouldn't never be able to forgive ourselves. Besides you got plenty nuf to do, now you got him to take care on."