“All right. Don’t hurry. I’ll stroll down to the gate.”
And he moved slowly down the path between the pinioned rose bushes, looking through the barring of the old gate at the dusty road.
He had not to wait long. He was standing there gazing down the road when he heard her light step and hurried breathing as she ran toward him.
“It was too bad,” she said as she came to a panting stand beside him, her alder switch still in her hand, “but I couldn’t let her eat those lettuces. We’ve had a lot of trouble with them and when they’re good we can sell them as far as Sonora.”
She said this with an air of pride, as one who vaunts an admired accomplishment.
“Do you like gardening?” he asked, and then stopped. From the house came a sudden sound of coughing, a heavy, racking paroxysm. The girl’s eyes slanted sidewise as she stood motionless, listening. She remained thus, in a trance-like quietude of attention till the sound grew fitful and then ceased.
“How did mother strike you?” she asked in a low voice.
“I—she—” he blundered, and then said desperately: “Well, she’s changed, of course, but after a long period of illness—”
He stopped. Unfinished sentences save more occasions than the world wots of.
“Yes, of course,” she said eagerly, seizing on even such feeble encouragement. “And she’s been sick for such a dreadfully long time, ever since Virginia, more than four years now. She’s thin, though, isn’t she?”