“I don’t believe in such stuff,” I answered. “You know how niggers are.”
“I know,” Mary Elinor answered, “but--well, look here, your own mother thought so.”
“Thought what?” I asked, and quickly. I was getting excited, and I wanted her to come to the point.
“Thought Madam Jumel didn’t want anyone to wear her bracelet, and made them unhappy--in some queer way--if they did. Everyone who wears that bracelet has awful things happen to ’em!”
“What?” I asked. I sat down on the foot of the bed.
“Well, mother said your mother said that because she wore it the first time your father kissed her, he died with pneumonia before he’d ever seen you. She said that made it.”
“I don’t believe it,” I asserted. I was annoyed. It didn’t sound like Mrs. Crane. Mary Elinor bridled, and her eyes snapped.
“Then don’t,” she said. “I only thought someone ought to tell you, before something frightful happened to you. And I don’t lie, Miss Natalie Page. You can ask my father, because he taught me not to and----”
“I know you don’t,” I answered, “and I’m sorry I said that.” And then I decided I’d better hear the story. Beside, I wanted to. So I told her to tell me all about what she knew of it, and she did.
It seems they have a room which they call “the winter room,” and this contains a cosy little alcove, lighted by a high window, which is remote and an ideal reading spot. And one day after Mrs. Crane got Uncle Frank’s letter, the letter about my coming, Mary Elinor happened to be there, reading. It was a book she had read before, and of course she knew what happened next, and so she wasn’t especially interested, and what her mother and father said sort of floated in her consciousness and rooted, she said, before she realized that she was listening. Then, since they hadn’t known she was there, she decided not to enlighten them. She knew that they would be shocked by her presence, and she assured me that she always tried to be considerate. And, she reasoned further, that since she had heard so much, almost involuntarily, there was no use stuffing up her ears, and beside, she was interested.