“What on earth ails you? That ain’t as funny as all that,” Mrs. Watkins cried. “Hush, hush now! Hold on to yourself, Mis’ Freeman. Quit that! You’ll be in hysterics d’rectly.”
“No, no! It isn’t funny. I won’t laugh. I promise not to laugh,” Julie gasped, biting her lips hard together between sentences, and fighting to choke back the wild paroxysms. “I won’t laugh. And she was crying! I saw her crying! Oh—” The tension broke and she collapsed into a flood of tears.
“There now, that’s better.” Mrs. Watkins patted her shoulder. “Now you’ll be all right in a little bit.”
“I—I am all right,” Julie affirmed presently, pressing her hand against her shaking mouth. “Don’t mind me—don’t. I—I just get this way sometimes.”
“We all do, us poor women—specially in this heat,” the other answered. “You’ll be all right now the storm’s broke. Just lay right still. I’ll be back in a little bit, an’ see if the clouds ain’t all gone, an’ the rainbow come: maybe you’ll have found the pot of gold at the end of it by then.”
Mrs. Watkins went off, shutting the door after her, and Julie was alone. She did not cry or laugh any more. She was very tired—completely spent—and a little confused also, so that as she lay there with closed eyes, what Mrs. Watkins had said as she went out kept repeating itself through her mind. “The end of the rainbow! The end of the rainbow!”
XIX
Tim found Julie still limp upon the sofa when he came home. She opened her eyes and stared up at him. He knew at once that something was the matter, and came quickly and knelt down beside her, laying his hands on hers.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“Elizabeth’s been here,” she answered, still lying helplessly on the sofa and looking at him.