“To talk with you,” Henrietta said. “I am through. This is the end, of course.”
“A nice little family chat, I suppose,” he sneered. “Door locked, hubby captured, wifey angry. Act 3, Scene 2. Villain husband lights cigarette.”
He took his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, knocking it on the back of his hand before he lighted it.
“Wife glares at husband,” he continued, in the same tone. “Husband nonchalantly crosses stage to chair.”
He walked toward the chair that stood by Henrietta's window.
“And exit husband,” he said, raising the wire screen of the window and stepping out upon the tin roof of the porch. Henrietta leaped forward, but only in time to hear the crackling of the tin as Freeman crossed to his own window. She heard his screen clatter down, and the creak of his window as he lowered it, and even the grating of the safety lock as he quite satisfactorily locked himself in.
For a moment Henrietta looked at her window; then she turned to Lem.
“Lem!” she commanded. “Lem, wake up!” The boy did not stir.
“Lem!” she said. “Wake up. I know you are only pretending. Stop this fooling; I want to talk to you.”
But Lem would not waken. She tried other ways, talking to him all the while, tickling the tough soles of his bare feet and opening his eyelids, but he was not to be coaxed or driven out of the pretended fit.