I stood in the doorway, that afternoon, for quite a few moments before I could go in, and when I did and Viola saw me, she sat up. Her cheeks were flushed and she didn’t look as if she had cried.
“Do you remember that letter?” she said.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
“What—can you remember just what I said in it?” she asked. I evaded as hard and convincingly as I could, but it did no good. She remembered it, only she had to talk of it, and she did it through questioning me.
“I—I told him that Leslie’s clothes made me feel like a pauper—” she stated in a hard, high voice, “that—that I’d had to struggle and pinch—I told him—”
I broke in then. And I made her lie down, and I got Leslie started at making tea, and then I helped Viola into bed, and tried to do what I could to divert her through taking off her clothes and making her comfortable and brushing her hair, and Leslie took the cue and stopped saying, “Oh, my dear, how can I help you?” which was not just what Viola needed then.
Every one was dreadfully upset, and worried for Viola, and Miss Meek came over with smelling salts, and Miss Bannister came tiptoeing to the door to ask what she could do, and Mr. Hemmingway, whose eyes were flooded in tears, told me of the death of his dear father—and he remembered the date—and Miss Julianna, with tears on her pretty round cheeks, came pattering in with offers of all sorts of strange things, and a little shrine, which she set up by Viola’s bed.
“La Madre Santa,” she said—which meant “The Sainted Mother”—and Leslie, who doesn’t seem to understand the people who differ from her in their way of worship, asked Viola if it should stay.
“I can take it away, darling,” she said in an undertone, “when Miss Julianna is gone.”
But Viola shook her head, and I was glad, for I liked its being there. I felt a good deal of comfort through the picture of the pretty woman who held the little baby so tightly in her arms and smiled at any one who looked at her. We all needed comfort, and some one who could smile.