“Hé, Tante Cat’rinette!” he called up to her.
She turned to the railing just as she was, in her bare arms and neck that gleamed ebony-like against the unbleached cotton of her chemise. A coarse skirt was fastened about her waist, and a string of many-colored beads knotted around her throat. She held her smoking pipe between her yellow teeth.
“How you all come on, Miché Eusèbe?” she questioned, pleasantly.
“We all middlin’, Tante Cat’rinette. But Miss Kitty, she putty bad off out yon’a. I see Mista Raymond dis mo’nin’ w’en I pass by his house; he say look like de feva don’ wan’ to quit ’er. She been axen’ fo’ you all t’rough de night. He ’low he reckon I betta tell you. Nice wedda we got fo’ plantin’, Tante Cat’rinette.”
“Nice wedda fo’ lies, Miché Eusèbe,” and she spat contemptuously down upon the banquette. She turned away without noticing the man further, and proceeded to hang one of Lawyer Paxton’s fine linen shirts upon the line.
“She been axen’ fo’ you all t’rough de night.”
Somehow Tante Cat’rinette could not get that refrain out of her head. She would not willingly believe that Eusèbe had spoken the truth, but— “She been axen fo’ you all t’rough de night—all t’rough de night.” The words kept ringing in her ears, as she came and went about her daily tasks. But by degrees she dismissed Eusèbe and his message from her mind. It was Miss Kitty’s voice that she could hear in fancy following her, calling out through the night, “W’ere Tante Cat’rinette? W’y Tante Cat’rinette don’ come? W’y she don’ come—w’y she don’ come?”
All day the woman muttered and mumbled to herself in her Creole patois; invoking council of “Vieumaite,” as she always did in her troubles. Tante Cat’rinette’s religion was peculiarly her own; she turned to heaven with her grievances, it is true, but she felt that there was no one in Paradise with whom she was quite so well acquainted as with “Vieumaite.”
Late in the afternoon she went and stood on her doorstep, and looked uneasily and anxiously out upon the almost deserted street. When a little girl came walking by,—a sweet child with a frank and innocent face, upon whose word she knew she could rely,—Tante Cat’rinette invited her to enter.
“Come yere see Tante Cat’rinette, Lolo. It’s long time you en’t come see Tante Cat’rine; you gittin’ proud.” She made the little one sit down, and offered her a couple of cookies, which the child accepted with pretty avidity.