“They’re Indians!” persisted Mrs. Parrish. “I’ll never get over being afraid of their dark faces. They’re heathens.”
Innes turned her eyes hopelessly away from the woman’s twitching face. She looked out the wire-meshed door beyond the line of stakes which stood for the proposed canal. She wondered when MacLean, Jr., would be coming back for her.
“Is that a company rig?” she asked.
“I declare if it isn’t the Busby wagon!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrish, jumping up and going to the door. Her dress threatened to leave her. “She’s driving the roans. There’s somebody with her. It must be Mr. Busby!”
The wretched room was then fully revealed to the guest. There was a rent in the loud-patterned couch cover of green and red; the table cover, a fringed imitation damask, was askew. Disorder leaped from beneath the couch, from the boxes by the door, from the room beyond. A graphophone perched uncertainly on the edge of the table. A pile of Youth’s Companions toppled uncertainly away over a pine box. There were a few pictures from Life tacked upon the board walls; a few were pasted to the canvas top-walls. Innes segregated the two influences. The graphophone, the file of Youth’s Companions, the pictures from Life, these were the contributions of Jim Parrish toward the elevating of their sordid life. The dirt, the disorder made up no less a heroic subscription from the wife, who was too frail for the sacrifice, too fond and too proud for a surrender.
“How can you see so far?” Innes asked. “I thought I could see farther than most people, but this glare blinds me.”
“If you lived over here in Number Six, miles off from everybody, with nobody to see, unless it’s the engineers or those black Indians, you’d learn to know folks miles off. It’s—yes, it is Mr. Busby. He’s been promising to bring her over here to sit with me the first time he came to inspect the Wistaria. It’s to come right past here when it’s finished. I’ll be seeing folks then. But I shouldn’t complain of not having visitors. Two in one day!”
To Innes Hardin the excitement seemed all out of proportion to the cause. Dark somber blotches were coming out on the woman’s skin. “Sit down. It’s too warm for you by the door.”
“They might go past,” began Mrs. Parrish, when a smell of burning food smote both their nostrils. “The rice and codfish’s burning,” she exclaimed, and fled to the kitchen in the lean-to.
She was not back in time to greet her guest, whose vigorous entrance struck at once the note of middle-aged, experienced authority. Innes had met her but once before, but she recognized the species, the woman who has the best recipe for bread, the most valuable hints for housekeepers; handy in the sick room, indispensable at accouchements; a kindly irresistible vulture.