The old man removed his pipe and looked at her plaintively. “Can’t ye make her, Lena?” he said. His high voice had a shrill note.
She shook her head. “I can’t do anything—not anything more.”
She moved away and began to gather up the dishes from the table, clearing it with swift jerks. She paused a moment and leaned over—the platter in her hand half-lifted from its place. “She needs the air,” she said, “and to run about—she’s sick—shut up like that!” She lifted the platter and carried it to the sink, a troubled look in her eyes. “I won’t be responsible for her—not much longer,” she said slowly, as she set it down, “not if she doesn’t get down in the air.”
The men looked at each other in silence. The old man got up. “Time to go to bed—” he said slowly.
They filed out of the room. The woman’s eyes followed them. Presently the door opened and the younger man returned, with soft, quick steps. He looked at her. “I want to talk,” he said.
“In a minute,” she replied. She nodded toward the cellar. “The lantern’s down there—you go along.”
He opened the door and stepped cautiously into blackness, and she heard a quick, scratching match on the plaster behind the closed door, and his feet descending the stairs.
She drew forward the kettle on the stove and replenished the fire, and blew out the hand lamp on the table. Then she groped her way to the cellar door, opening it with noiseless touch.
The young man waited below, impatient. On a huge barrel near by, the lantern cast a yellow circle on the blackness.
The woman approached it, her high-stepping figure flung in shadowy movement along the wall behind her.