And presently she closed her eyes. When, after a long still interval, she opened them, they were cypress-shaded pools.
"Tell me what happened, Ambo."
"He's dead, Susan. Pearl's dead, too."
She closed her eyes again, and two big tears slipped out from between her lids, wetting her thick eyelashes and staining her bruised and her pallid cheek.
"He couldn't help it. He was made like that, inside. He was no damn good, Ambo. That's what he was always saying to Pearl—'You're no damn good.' She wasn't, either. And he wasn't, much. I guess it's better for him and Pearl to be dead."
This—and the two big tears—was her good-by to Bob, to Pearl, to the four-room house; her good-by to Birch Street. It shocked me at the time. I released her hand and stood up to light a cigarette—staring the while at Susan. Where had she found her precocious brains? And had she no heart? Had something of Bob's granitic harshness entered into this uncanny, this unnatural child? Should I live to regret my decision to care for her, to educate her? When I died, would she say—to whom?—"I guess it's better for him to be dead. Poor Ambo! He was no damn good."
But even as I shuddered, I smiled. For, after all, she was right; the child was right. She had merely uttered, truthfully, thoughts which a more conventional mind, more conventionally disciplined, would have known how to conceal—yes, to conceal even from itself. Genius was very like that.
"Susan!" I suddenly demanded. "Have you any relatives who will try to claim you?"
"Claim me?"
"Yes. Want to take care of you?"