Amy paused in her weaving and moaning to shake her head negatively.
“Then what’s wrong? Is Miss Mayfield ill?”
Again the negative shake.
“I’se waitin’ up for yo’, Mis’ Ruth. I want you to let me sleep upstairs with you all tonight. There’s a couch in the room what you all paint. I kin use that,—please, Mis’ Ruth, I’se a dead woman ef you says no.”
“What nonsense!” said Ruth, trying to speak sharply and at the same time in a low tone. Amy, for all her agitation, kept her voice almost a whisper and kept turning her head over her shoulder as if she feared that some one was coming up behind her.
“Why do you want to sleep in my studio? Aren’t you comfortable downstairs? If you’re ill I’ll send for a doctor. You’ll have to give me some reason.”
She saw that the negro woman’s distress was very real, however foolish, and laid her hand on her trembling shoulder.
“Doan ask me no questions now—jes let me come,” she said rising as if she would accompany Ruth upstairs against her will, and still looking over her shoulder.
“I can’t let you come unless you tell me why,” said Ruth, her voice growing louder in spite of her efforts to keep it low.
The negress laid a warning finger on her lips and shot a look of such terror over her shoulder that Ruth felt a sympathetic thrill of horror down her own spine and peered into the blackness beyond the stairway, half expecting to see some apparition there. Then struggling as much to control her own nerves as those of the servant, she put both hands on Amy’s shoulders and forced her down on the stairway again.