“I get you. So should I,” the girl responded eagerly. “Of course you know that it isn’t alive, but you can’t help feeling all the time just as if it were—those darling little sticks of legs tucked in under so naturally and all that. I shouldn’t want it scraped, either. Promise not to let on if I tell you something?”
The invalid looked as if she would have smiled if she hadn’t long since forgotten how.
“I promise,” she said in a voice which indicated the weary while since she had relaxed her terrible grimness.
“Well, when I saw it, so little and cunning and helpless, and then saw—what had happened to it, out there all alone, I just cried. I couldn’t help it, honestly.”
As she looked at the girl, tears came to the invalid’s eyes. The hand which held her pocket handkerchief to them was like a yellow claw, but they were less sharp when she removed it.
“O, don’t you feel badly about it, please, please,” Anna begged. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll clean it all up slick. I can use sand soap and all sorts of lightning cleaners. I’ll get someone to put me wise about cleaning marble without letting on what it’s for.”
“O, if you only would!” cried the invalid looking and speaking more like Red-Riding-Hood’s wolf than like the girl-wife Anna had dreamed of restoring to her husband (who might be this woman’s son or grandson).
“I hope—I didn’t frighten you?”
“I was a bit fazed, but I shouldn’t be again,” Anna admitted as she rose. Then she caught her breath sharply at the thought of there being an again. And after all, why should there be? Though she couldn’t help being sorry for her, there was nothing she could do with that sort of person. Surely she couldn’t wish that sort of wife upon poor Mr. Langley!
“And you will tell me how you get along?” the other asked.