She rose hastily, clinging to his arm. “You mustn’t,” she exclaimed, yet not loudly. “You don’t know! He is watching—something frightful would happen.”
“Nothing ‘frightful,’” he returned tolerantly, preparing to descend. “Only unfortunate for Nicholas.”
“You mustn’t,” she repeated desperately, her sheer weight hanging from her hands clasped about his neck. “Nicholas is not—not human. There’s something funny about him. I don’t mean funny, I—”
He unclasped her fingers and quietly forced her back to the seat on the box. Then he took a place at her side.
“Now,” he asked reasonably, “what is this about Nicholas?”
She glanced down into the desolate cavern of the store; the ghostly remnant of cotton goods fluttered in a draft like a torn and grimy cobweb; the lower floor was palpably bare.
“He came in April,” she commenced in a voice without any life. “The woman we had had for years was dead; and when Nicholas asked for work we were glad to take him. He wanted the smallest possible wages and was willing to do everything; he even cooked quite nicely. At first he was jumpy—he had asked if many strangers went by; but then when no one appeared he got easier.... He got easier and began to do extra things for me. I thanked him—until I understood. Then I asked father to send him away, but he was afraid; and, before I could get up my courage to do it, Nicholas spoke—
“He said he was crazy about me, and would I please try and be good to him. He had always wanted to marry, he went on, and live right, but things had gone against him. I told him that he was impertinent and that he would have to go at once; but he cried and begged me not to say that, not to get him ‘started.’”
That, John Woolfolk recalled, was precisely what the man had said to him.
“I went back to father and told him why he must send Nicholas off, but father nearly suffocated. He turned almost black. Then I got frightened and locked myself in my room, while Nicholas sat out on the stair and sobbed all night. It was ghastly! In the morning I had to go down, and he went about his duties as usual.