He returned too late. The protesting little spirit had entered the world without him, and lay crying, wrapped in an old flannel night-dress, in Mrs. Kennedy’s lap, while the young mother watched it with unfathomable eyes.
CHAPTER FOUR
I
Angelica sat at the kitchen table, her blouse torn rudely open at the neck, wet through with perspiration, haggard and worn almost beyond recognition.
"My Gawd!" she said, pushing back her hair. "It’s hot as hell, mommer!"
Mrs. Kennedy sighed, without speaking or interrupting her work. She was standing at the ironing-board, finishing a big week’s washing. It was a night of intolerable and sultry heat, and the kitchen, with the stove lighted for the irons, and the gas blazing for light, was a place of torment. The two women were curiously pallid, curiously alert, with the terrible activity of exhaustion. They had reached so high a point of suffering, both physical and mental, on that night, that they were no longer aware of their pain.
"Listen, mommer!" said Angelica. "Here’s what I’ve written."
She picked up the sheet of soft paper with blue lines, on which the ink blurred and the pen dug and scratched, and on which she had written:
Vincent:
The baby has been sick all the time, and now he is worse. You got to send some money for him. You got to find it somewhere if you have not got it. He is in a terrible bad state. He only weighs six pounds, and he is going on for six weeks.