Harris considered. "Yes, Miss, she would. Mr. Blair don't put things right to his ma. He'd say something she wouldn't like. He'd say something about some of his pretty truck. Them things always make her mad. That picture he bought—the lady nursin' the baby, in your parlor; she ain't got over that yet. Oh, no, she'll take it better from you. You be pretty with her, Miss Nannie. She likes it when you're pretty with her. I once seen a chippy sittin' on a cowcatcher; well, it made me think o' you and her. You be pretty to her, and then tell her, kind of—of easy," Harris ended weakly.
Easy! It was all very well to say "easy"; Harris might as well say knock her down "easy." At that moment the back door banged.
Mrs. Maitland burst into the room in intense preoccupation; the day had been one of absorbing interest, culminating in success, and she was alert with satisfaction. "Harris, supper! Nannie, take my bonnet! Is your brother to be here to-night? I've something to tell him! Where's the evening paper?"
Nannie, breathless, took the forlorn old bonnet, and said, "I—I think he isn't coming, Mamma." Harris came running with the newspaper; they exchanged a frightened glance, although the mistress of the house, with one hand on the carving-knife, was already saying, "Bless, O Lord—"
At supper Mrs. Maitland, eating—as the grocer said so long ago, "like a day-laborer"—read her paper. Nannie watching her, ate nothing at all and said nothing at all.
When the coarse, hurried meal was at an end, and Harris, blinking with horrified sympathy, had shut himself into his pantry, Nannie said, faintly, "Mamma, I have something to tell you."
"I guess it will keep, my dear, I guess it will keep! I'm too busy just now to talk to you." She crumpled up her newspaper, flung it on the floor, and plunged over to her desk.
Nannie looked helplessly at the back of her head, then went off to her parlor. She sat there in the firelit darkness, too distracted and frightened to light the gas, planning how the news must be told. At eight o'clock there was a fluttering, uncertain ring at the front door, and Cherry-pie came quivering in: had Nannie heard anything more? Did she know where they were? "I asked her uncle to come down here and see if Mrs. Maitland had heard anything, but—he was dreadful, Nannie, dreadful! He said he would see the whole family in—I can't repeat where he said he would see them!" She broke down and cried; then, crouching at Nannie's side, she read Blair's letter by the uncertain light of the fire. After that, except for occasional whispered ejaculations of terror and pain, they were silent, sitting close together like two frightened birds; sometimes a lump of coal split apart, or a hissing jet of gas bubbled and flamed between the bars of the grate, and then their two shadows flickered gigantic on the wall behind them; but except for that the room was very still. When the older woman rose to go, Nannie clung to her:
"Oh, won't you tell her? Please—please!" Poor old Miss White could only shake her head:
"I can't, my dear, I can't! It would not be fitting. Do it now, my dear; do it immejetly, and get it over."