“It’s awful, her being afraid to pray,” Miss Mary rejoined. “I ought to go back an’ speak to her about it.”
Here Julie snapped out the light.
“There!” she heard old Mrs. Stover announce. “She’s goin’ to bed, like I told her to!”
“Well, it certainly was mighty funny, but I’ll find out all about it to-morrow,” Mrs. Wicket said, as their heels clicked away down the cement walk; and Julie knew that her having sat upon the church steps would yet have to be faced and explained.
“Oh, I am such an idiot!” she broke out. And now the nervous tears rushed forth, and she went about her preparations for bed, shaking convulsively, wiping them away, and raging at herself. “You idiot! You idiot!” she stormed. Even after the light was out and she was stretched in bed, the devils of self-hatred continued to tear through her. She tossed unhappily from one side to the other, going over and over the whole miserable evening. Why had she run away? Why hadn’t she stayed and faced it out? Oh, but she couldn’t pray—she just couldn’t! Well then, if she had to go, why hadn’t she come straight home, instead of lingering there on the steps? Of course that was a strange thing to do. Of course people would think it funny if they knew. And they would know. Mrs. Wicket would be sure to find it out, and sure to tell. Julie writhed all through her thin body.
“Oh, you little fool!” she gasped. “What business is it of Mrs. Wicket’s what you do? Why can’t you stand up to her and make her mind her own affairs! Everybody comes an’ bosses you. Mrs. Anderson gave the little bird to the cat, and Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary poking into all you do, an’ you takin’ everything from ’em just because you’re scared to look ’em in the face. Oh, you fool—you fool!—But I mustn’t go on saying ‘fool’!” she wept.
Her shyness, her reserve, and morbid self-consciousness wrapped themselves about her, as intangible as spider webs, but as difficult to break as forged iron. As the night wore on, her having sat upon the church steps assumed an enormity out of all proportion to the fact. She knew that this was an obsession, but all alone in the depths of her self-distrust and sleeplessness, she could not break free from it.
“Oh, what a fool I am to take things so hard!” she panted. “Now everybody’ll know I’m afraid to pray in public. There won’t be one person that goes to the Methodist church that won’t know it. Oh, you silly idiot! Oh, how I hate you!” In a culminating burst of rage, she turned over and set her teeth violently into her thin arm.
The hours writhed away at last, and just before dawn she fell asleep, but, even then she was not delivered. In her dreams she herself became horribly confused with the little chimney-swallow, and Mrs. Anderson, in the shape of Blackie the cat, pounced upon her.
There was another cat also—this one with two heads; one head had the snapping eyes of Mrs. Wicket, and the other the broad and stupid face of Miss Mary Humphries. They gazed on her, and she heard them making a dreadful play on words.