THE FLOWERS IN THE FRONT YARD WERE KNEE-DEEP IN SNOW
"Land!" she cried. "In all this snow!"
She finished tying a fresh white apron over her polka-dotted blue wrapper, and joyously led the lady in.
Batty was a freckled little fellow, with red hair like his father's; he had the pretty imperiousness of a sick and only child who has by all the sorceries contrived to escape petulance. When he had greeted the visitor, he ran back to his jig-saw. He was carving camwood, which stained his fingers crimson.
"I want to see you—alone," began Mrs. Chester, nervously. It had been one of Chester's pleasures to warm the entire house for the convalescent lad, and big coal fires were purring in Batty's bedroom and in the ten-foot "parlor," whither his mother conducted her guest. The doors were left open. The scent of the camwood came across, pungent and sickening. The fret of the jig-saw went on steadily.
"He's makin' a paper-cutter—for Mr. Chester," observed Batty's mother. "He made a watch-case last week—for Mr. Chester."
Mary Chester paled, and she plunged at once:
"There's something I've come to tell—I've got to tell you. We can't keep it to ourselves any longer. I have come to tell you how it happened—that Batty— We thought you'd rather not know—"
"Lord! my dear," said the quarryman's wife, "we've known it all the while."
The visitor's head swam. She laid it down upon her gloved hands on Mrs. Dryver's centre-table. This had a marble top, and felt as the quarries look in winter on Cape Ann. What were tears that they should warm it? The sound of the jig-saw grew uneven and stopped.