She had a piece of wire netting put up along the wall to keep Mimi out.
“That’s the end of it,” she said. She could never think of the young girl without a pang of sadness and resentment.
Fifty-five. Sixty.
In her sixty-second year Harriett had her first bad illness.
It was so like Sarah Barmby. Sarah got influenza and regarded it as a common cold and gave it to Harriett who regarded it as a common cold and got pleurisy.
When the pain was over she enjoyed her illness, the peace and rest of lying there, supported by the bed, holding out her lean arms to be washed by Maggie; closing her eyes in bliss while Maggie combed and brushed and plaited her fine gray hair. She liked having the same food at the same hours. She would look up, smiling weakly, when Maggie came at bedtime with the little tray. “What have you brought me now, Maggie?”
“Benger’s Food, ma’am.”
She wanted it to be always Benger’s Food at bedtime. She lived by habit, by the punctual fulfillment of her expectation. She loved the doctor’s visits at twelve o’clock, his air of brooding absorption in her case, his consultations with Maggie, the seriousness and sanctity he attached to the humblest details of her existence.
Above all she loved the comfort and protection of Maggie, the sight of Maggie’s broad, tender face as it bent over her, the feeling of Maggie’s strong arms as they supported her, the hovering pressure of the firm, broad body in the clean white apron and the cap. Her eyes rested on it with affection; she found shelter in Maggie as she had found it in her mother.
One day she said, “Why did you come to me, Maggie? Couldn’t you have found a better place?”