"You poor, lonely little missy—and, if you don't mind my saying it, so pretty and all."
"My nose is red!" she said, dabbing at it with her handkerchief and observing herself in the strip of mirror.
"Like I care! I've seen a good many funerals in my day—and give me a healthy red-nose cry every time! I've had dry funerals and wet ones; and of the two it's the wet ones that go off easiest. Gimme a wet funeral, and I'll run it off on schedule time, and have the horses back in the stable to the minute! It's at the dry funerals that the wimmin go off in swoons and hold up things in every other drug store. I'm the last one to complain of a red nose, little missy."
"Oh," she said, catching her breath on the end of a sob, "I know I'm a sight! Poor Angie—she used to say a lot of women get credit for bein' tender-hearted when their red noses wasn't from cryin' at all, but from a small size and tight-lacin'. Poor Angie—to think that only day before yesterday we were going down to work together! She always liked to walk next to the curb, 'cause she said that's where the oldest ought to walk."
"'In the midst of life we are in death,'" said Mr. Lux. The wind stiffened and blew more sharply still. "Lemme raise that window, little missy. It's gettin' real Novembery—and you in that thin jacket and all. Hadn't we better stop off and get you a cup of coffee?"
"When I get home I'll fix it," she said. "When—I—get—home." She lowered her faintly purple lids and shivered.
"Poor little missy!"
Toward the close of their long drive a heavy dusk came early and shut out the dim afternoon; the lights of the city began to show whimsically through the haze.
"We're almost—home," she said.
"Almost; and if you don't mind I ain't going to leave you all alone up there. I'll go up with you and kinda stay a few minutes till—till the newness wears off. I know what them returns home mean. I'd kinda like to stay with you awhile, if you'll let me, Miss Prokes."