“That I should have lived to see this day!” she said by way of reply.
I waited till her passion abated.
There came a lull. I forgot the weapon in my pocket. I said nothing, and suddenly she stood erect before me, wiping her swollen eyes. “Willie,” she gulped, “she’s gone!”
“Nettie?”
“Gone! . . . Run away. . . . Run away from her home. Oh, Willie, Willie! The shame of it! The sin and shame of it!”
She flung herself upon my shoulder, and clung to me, and began again to wish her daughter lying dead at our feet.
“There, there,” said I, and all my being was a-tremble. “Where has she gone?” I said as softly as I could.
But for the time she was preoccupied with her own sorrow, and I had to hold her there, and comfort her with the blackness of finality spreading over my soul.
“Where has she gone?” I asked for the fourth time.
“I don’t know—we don’t know. And oh, Willie, she went out yesterday morning! I said to her, ‘Nettie,’ I said to her, ‘you’re mighty fine for a morning call.’ ‘Fine clo’s for a fine day,’ she said, and that was her last words to me!—Willie!—the child I suckled at my breast!”