“You’ve changed things,” she mumbled drowsily, and then; “my, but you are a brave woman!”
I smiled, and she smiled, too.
“I thought you would leave the house after the first time,” she continued. “I didn’t mean to do it before you come—not when I wrote that note. I never meant to bother you. Did you get a letter from me in a book?”
“Yes.”
“But afterward, when I knew you was asleep in my room, the both of you, I just gave way and threw myself against the little door. I didn’t care if you found me and settled things then and there, but you didn’t do nothing. You never did.”
“No,” I answered, “I didn’t think you were anything—but my imagination.”
Mattie turned her face from me.
“You didn’t imagine nothing,” she replied.
My heart stood still.
“I didn’t make anything up. I just went over and over it, like I always done, in my mind. Seems as if I never thought of anything else ever since.”