She made a disclaiming with her head.
"The world and the system may be mistaken," she said hotly. And as she said it she now looked straight ahead, though her face was spirited.
He checked their steps. Their own corner was in sight, a block straight ahead.
"So?" from this Culpepper, watching her. "So, honey? All the better then. It clears the decks. It seemed decenter somehow to include his claims. And now for mine. Everybody knows where I stand. What I want. You know. My mother for godspeed, when I came away in August, said, 'Go on down and take your job and marry Selina.' Will you do it, honey?"
Her color was gone with the violence with which it came, leaving her white. A tremor went over her.
Watching her as closely still, he went on. "What a fool time and fool place to ask it, where I can't pick you up and tell you a few things. Can't comfort you, honey, the way we used to comfort your hurt fingers and feelings when you'd bring 'em to us when you were around five! Remember how I used to cure 'em, Selina?" coaxingly. "And ole Miss'll belong to us? She's a little more mine even than she's yours? What say now, honey, don't let's go teasing each other this way any longer?"
Up the home street ahead of them Tuttle, his tally-ho a-blossom now with gay parasols, was wheeling round the far intersection and about to come toward them. A moment or so more, and as they themselves would arrive at Selina's squat house, he would be wheeling in at the curb before it.
"As you say, Culpepper, it's a foolish time to try to talk. But I must try, and quickly, before we get there, please."
Her color was all gone so that even her pretty lips, a bit compressed to hide their trembling, were white. So white his hand went out to touch hers, hanging at her side, for reassurance.
But hers clenched so that he could not grasp it. Blessed child! And yet so obviously now, woman, too, through the child.