He bent to his task again. But a sudden draft of air whisked certain loose sheets off his desk, carrying them toward the fireplace, and he swung about to find a woman in his doorway. She was a big, upstanding woman, overfleshed and overdressed, and upon her face she bore the sign of her profession as plainly and indubitably as though it had been branded there in scarlet letters.
The old man's eyes narrowed as he recognised her. But up he got on the instant and bowed before her. No being created in the image of a woman ever had reason to complain that in her presence Judge Priest forgot his manners.
“Howdy do, ma'am,” he said ceremoniously. “Will you walk in? I'm sort of busy jest at present.”
“That's what your nigger boy told me, outside,” she said; “but I came right on in any-way.
“Ah-hah, so I observe,” stated Judge Priest dryly, but none the less politely; “mout I enquire the purpose of this here call?”
“Yes, sir; I'm a-goin' to tell you what brought me here without wastin' any more words than I can help,” said the woman. “No, thank you,' Judge,” she went on as he motioned her toward a seat; “I guess I can say what I've got to say, standin' up. But you set down, please, Judge.”!
She advanced to the side of his desk as he settled back in his chair, and rested one broad flat hand upon the desk top. Three or four heavy, bejewelled bangles that were on her arm slipped down her gloved wrist with a clinking sound. Her voice was coarsened and flat; it was more like a man's voice than a woman's, and she spoke with a masculine directness.
“There was a girl died at my house early this mornin',” she told him. “She died about a quarter past four o'clock. She had something like pneumonia. She hadn't been sick but two days; she wasn't very strong to start with anyhow. Viola St. Claire was the name she went by here. I don't know what her real name was—she never told anybody what it was. She wasn't much of a hand to talk about herself. She must have been nice people though, because she was always nice and ladylike, no matter what happened. From what I gathered off and on, she came here from some little town down near Memphis. I certainly liked that girl. She'd been with me nearly ten months. She wasn't more than nineteen years old.
“Well, all day yestiddy she was out of her head with a high fever. But just before she died she come to and her mind cleared up. The doctor was gone—old Doctor Lake. He'd done all he could for her and he left for his home about midnight, leavin' word that he was to be called if there was any change. Only there wasn't time to call him; it all came so sudden.
“I was settin' by her when she opened her eyes and whispered, sort of gaspin', and called me by my name. Well, you could 'a' knocked me down with a feather. From the time she started sinkin' nobody thought she'd ever get her senses back. She called me, and I leaned over her and asked her what it was she wanted, and she told me. She knew she was dyin'. She told me she'd been raised right, which I knew already without her tellin' me, and she said she'd been a Christian girl before she made her big mistake. And she told me she wanted to be buried like a Christian, from a regular church, with a sermon and flowers and music and all that. She made me promise that I'd see it was done just that way. She made me put my hand in her hand and promise her. She shut her eyes then, like she was satisfied, and in a minute or two after that she died, still holdin' on tight to my hand. There wasn't nobody else there—just me and her—and it was about a quarter past four o'clock in the mornin'.”