Frankie hurried across to the cottage, but Sally couldn’t come; she was sick in bed and there was no one available but young Norman Washington, aged nine, who was guaranteed by his mother to be trustworthy.
The old lady, however, rejected him.
“Worse than no one!” she cried. “A boy! He’ll eat up all my preserves. And goodness knows what he’ll break.”
It also occurred to her that he was quite likely, in his quality as boy, to set fire to the house; in fact, as she considered it longer, she declared it certain that he would do so.
She was in a pitifully nervous state. She entreated Frances to dress her again and help her downstairs, so that she could wait there, where, in case of fire, she could manage somehow to get out. She couldn’t eat anything for lunch. She sat propped up in bed, her trembling fingers moving ceaselessly, her watery eyes staring vacantly, in dim anxiety, consumed with dread, with the horror of her own helplessness. As she passed by the door, Frances could see her there, each time more intolerably pitiful. Until, one time, she saw her press her poor, clawlike hand against her mouth.... Somehow that decided Frances; she couldn’t leave her; couldn’t endure the idea of her alone there until two in the morning, when the last train would have brought her back. No; she couldn’t go. She went into the room, hard and brusque again.
“I won’t go to the city,” she said. “I’ll just harness up Bess somehow and go to the village and send a telegram.”
All over—all finished. She knew it. She had no hope, no illusion about the matter, only the certainty that her terribly brief time of happiness was done.
II
Happiness which existed now only in her memory, in time to grow incredible even there....
One year!