"Yes'm, thank you. Milk and eggs, too. Reckon I'll be bustin' fat by this time next week if'n I keep on swallowin' all them things Miss Hedwig brings me. She certainly is a good lady, that Miss Hedwig is. She's got roses in her cheeks, and ain't her light hair pretty? She wears it awful plain, just parted and brushed back, but it's like the silk in corn. Is that all the name she's got— Hedwig?"
"No. Hedwig Armstrong is her name. She's an Austrian."
"I knew a girl named Armstrong once, but she was a Yorkburger. Is
Armstrong Austrian, too?"
"Armstrong is American, I suppose. I don't know what it is." She laughed, pulling the petals off a rose and popping them with her lips. "Hedwig is a pretty name, and the other part I never think of. I had almost forgotten the other part."
"I didn't know there was any other part. But I heard Susie tell muther once the Mrs. Deford and Miss Honoria Brockenborough were talking about her the day they bought their spring hats, and they said she looked like a mystery to them, and they thought 'twas very strange a nice-looking white woman should be willing to come down here and be a servant."
Mary Cary frowned quickly. "I wish they had said that to me. Hedwig is my maid, but she is my friend as well. She used to be in my uncle's hospital. In all this big country she hasn't a relative."
"They said her letters had Mrs. on them. Somebody at the post-office told them so, but her husband ain't ever been to see her, they said, and muther say she didn't think that sounded as righteous as it might, comin' from Mrs. Deford, whose husband don't seem to hanker after her neither, and—"
"Next time you hear anything like that you might mention that dead husbands can't visit conveniently. Hedwig's husband is dead."
Peggy sat upright, eyes wide and interested. "Poor thing! I thought she had an awful lonely look at times. I certainly am sorry he's dead. I mean if he was worth killing. Muther say all men ain't. Hasn't she got any little children, either?"
Mary Cary bent over the rose in her hand and buried her lips in its damp depths. "No," she said, after a moment, "she has no children. Her little girl died."