Sitting there, while Nettie dismissed him as negligible, he saw her clearly, grimly. He looked at her. She was plump, but not too short, with a generous width between the hips; a broad full bosom, but firm; round arms and quick slim legs; a fine sturdy throat. The curve between arm and breast made a graceful gracious line ... Working in a bond office ... Working in a bond office ... There was nothing in the Bible about working in a bond office. Here was a woman built for child-bearing.
She thought him senile, negligible.
In March Nettie had in a sewing woman for a week. She had her two or three times a year. A hawk-faced woman of about forty-nine, with a blue-bottle figure and a rapacious eye. She sewed in the dining room and there was a pleasant hum of machine and snip of scissors and murmur of conversation and rustle of silky stuff; and hot savoury dishes for lunch. She and old man Minick became great friends. She even let him take out bastings. This when Nettie had gone out from two to four, between fittings.
He chuckled and waggled his head. "I expect to be paid regular assistant's wages for this," he said.
"I guess you don't need any wages, Mr. Minick," the woman said. "I guess you're pretty well fixed."
"Oh, well, I can't complain." (Five hundred a year.)
"Complain! I should say not! If I was to complain it'd be different. Work all day to keep myself; and nobody to come home to at night."
"Widow, ma'am?"
"Since I was twenty. Work, work, that's all I've had. And lonesome! I suppose you don't know what lonesome is."
"Oh, don't I!" slipped from him. He had dropped the bastings.