“You pity me, don’t you?” Bessie said, looking up in 212 Blanche’s face, as though she could read her answer there. “I know you will not lock me up.”
“Yes, Bessie, I do pity you, and I wish you would tell me what made you——”
“There, don’t you say it, too, I’m not crazy. I am just tired of waiting. He told me he would come back, but he never came, and when I found that I was left alone, then I began to grow so tired, so tired of waiting. But I will not tell you his name, because—when Ross sees him he will kill him.”
“But I will not kill him.”
“Yes, you will, and then they will all be glad, but the wind must not know it, for it might fly away and tell him, and then I cannot have my revenge. Now, if you tell I will take your head right off, too.”
“The wind shall not know it,” said Blanche, stroking Bessie’s hair, and speaking in a kindly way.
“Hark,” said Bessie, as the old wild light came back to her eyes. “They are trying to get in; they want to hear what I am telling you, but they shall not; now listen. When I find him I am going to shoot his head right off. You see all the ghosts from the graveyard away out there on the hill came down one night when it rained just like this, only the thunder rolled away over the hills, and made me laugh, ha, ha, ha! Oh, how I laughed to hear the big thunder crash right down on my head, and then all the ghosts stood around, clapping their bony hands, and laughed too.”
“La me, I don’t believe I can stand this another minute,” said Mrs. Morris.
“Oh, I just wish you had seen what a wild, wild time 213 we had out there in the storm,” said Bessie, with another burst of laughter. “How the rain came down, and beat upon our heads, and the thunder crashed among the hills, and the lightning danced, keeping time to the music we made with our laughter, and the skull of every ghost was nodding and grinning in the darkness, and then it was they gathered about me, and made me swear, by all the spirits of the dead who were lying in their graves—swear by the spirit of my little dead baby that I would take the stain from my name; that I would take away the heartaches that I had made, and make my mother smile again. Oh, I was glad that they told me I must swear, but you can’t guess how.”
“No,” said Blanche, growing more and more interested.