This was the first time she had mentioned Godfrey to me, and as I had the impression that she did not know him, I was going to ask her about it when she said, eagerly:
“And he was the young girl’s lover, and she only fifteen; that’s funny. I’m twelve, and I should not think of having a beau; but go on and tell me more, and what they did with him, and what she did, and all of them.”
I told her what they did, and how for a day and a night the body lay in the parlor below, and where they buried it, and about the monument and my promise to keep the grave clean and nice.
“And have you done it?” Gertie asked, her cheeks like roses and her eyes as bright as stars.
I confessed to recent neglect, and said I had not been there once during the summer.
“Then it’s awful by this time,” Gertie said. “Let’s go and fix it to-morrow, you and I, will you?”
I promised that I would, and then, as it was growing dark, I bade her good-night, she saying to me in a whisper:
“I’ll not tell auntie about that girl who used to have my room, because if I did I’d have to tell about the body which lay in the parlor, and she would surely see his ghost. She’s afraid of ’em, you know. I guess that class always are.”
She spoke of her auntie’s belonging to a class different from herself as naturally as possible, and still with no shadow of contempt or disrespect in her voice. Mrs. Rogers had always taught her that though she must expect nothing from others on account of it, she was superior to people like herself and Norah, and Gertie accepted it as a fact, not knowing exactly whether it was the forty pounds a year or the big house where she used to live, or the dead mother, or the father who would not own her, or the grandmother she had never seen, which gave her the precedence.
The next day, true to my promise, I took Gertie to the Schuyler Cemetery and showed her Abelard’s grave.