She said the last words with a kind of unconscious consciousness. While she uttered them her mind had evidently turned back to other times—not her own, but little Margery’s.
Miss Amory drew a deep breath. She took up her knitting. She asked a question.
“You knew her very well—Margery?”
Susan drew her chair closer and looked in the old face with uncertain eyes.
“Miss Starkweather,” she said, “do you think that a girl’s being—like me—would make her evil-minded? Would it make her suspicion things, and be afraid of them—when there wasn’t nothin’? I should think that it would,” quite wistfully.
“It might,” answered Miss Amory, her knitting-needles flying; “but for God’s sake don’t call yourself evil-minded. You’d be evil-minded if you were glad to suspect—not if you were sorry and afraid.”
“Glad!” with a groan. “Oh, Lord, I guess not. But I might be all wrong all the same, mightn’t I?”
“Yes, you might.”
“I loved her—oh, Lord, I did love her! I’d reason to,” the girl went on, and her manner had the effect of frightened haste. “I’ve suffered awful sometimes—thinkin’ in the night and prayin’ there wasn’t nothin’. She was such a delicate, innocent little thing. It would have killed her.”
“What were you afraid of?”