“Why, wherever in the world are you going?” she asked.
“Home.”
“Don’t you do a thing,” she admonished, “until you have something to eat.”
“How about yourself?” I tried to muster a smile.
“What, me? I’m all right. Don’t worry about me.”
She looked all right. She had found a skirt somewhere and tucked the shawl into the belt of it, and put a mob-cap on over her curlers and gone to housekeeping. How could she be so methodical after all that had happened? I sat down meekly in a tall-backed rocking-chair beside the red-clothed table, too weak to resist her ordered comfort, and before I could check myself I had fallen asleep.
The hands of the banjo-clock on the wall were at ten when I sat up. Mrs. Dove was pouring hot jelly into a row of glasses.
“It turned out fine,” she said. “Do you want a taste?”
I put my finger tentatively into the sticky saucer and suddenly woke up, realizing that here was something delicious that I had never tried before and that doubtless life still held many new sensations if one had wit enough to enjoy them. But I had not. Housekeeping, jelly-making, were nothing to me this morning. I had only one impulse, one thought, one purpose—to leave.
The black cat came miawing around for her breakfast. It seemed strange to me that after I had put her out in the storm that night she should keep coming back.