They came in, with heads uncovered and voices hushed, to see her, in the days while she was lying down stairs among the flowers.
Once when I thought that she was alone, I went in,—it was at twilight,—and turned, startled by a figure that was crouched sobbing on the floor.
“O, I want to go too, I want to go too!” it cried.
“She’s ben there all day long,” said Phœbe, wiping her eyes, “and she won’t go home for a mouthful of victuals, poor creetur! but she jest sets there and cries and cries, an’ there’s no stoppin’ of her!”
It was little Clo.
At another time, I was there with fresh flowers, when the door opened, creaking a little, and ’Bin Quirk came in on tiptoe, trying in vain to still the noise of his new boots. His eyes were red and wet, and he held out to me timidly a single white carnation.
“Could you put it somewhere, where it wouldn’t do any harm? I walked way over to Worcester and back to get it. If you could jest hide it under the others out of sight, seems to me it would do me a sight of good to feel it was there, you know.”
I motioned to him to lay it himself between her fingers.
“O, I darsn’t. I’m not fit, I’m not. She’d rether have you.”
But I told him that I knew she would be as pleased that he should give it to her himself as she was when he gave her the China pinks on that distant summer day. So the great awkward fellow bent down, as simply as a child, as tenderly as a woman, and left the flower in its place.