"Where is hit—then?" A cunning crept into Becky's cavernous eyes. "Where is hit?"
"Aunt Becky, no one must know! You want it—that way." Inspiration guided Mary, or was it, perhaps, that iron strain, the strong human strain of her kind that led her true? "Zalie, she done come back; not to look for hit, but to keep you from hit!"
The stroke told. Becky shrank farther in the chair.
"Gawd!" she moaned—"it's that lonely! An' the longin' hurts powerful sharp."
Mary's face twitched. Did she not know?
"But hit!"—she whispered—"don't you love hit strong enough, Aunt Becky, to let hit alone, where hit's happy, not knowing?"
There was something majestic about Mary as she kept her eyes upon the old woman while she pleaded with her.
The past came creeping up on the two women by the ashy hearth—it gave Becky strength; it blinded Mary. In the old woman's memory a picture flashed—the picture that once had hung on the wall of Ridge House!
She folded her bony arms over her bosom and panted:
"Yes—I love hit—well enough!" The last hold was loosening. Then: