’Twas not so, I thought.
“She’ve her mother’s shame come upon her,” says he, “an’ she’ve hid.”
I wished it might be so.
“Jus’ lied down an’ hid,” he repeated.
“No, no!” says I. “She’d never weakly hide her head from this.”
He eyed me.
“Not Judith!” I expostulated.
“She’d never bear her mother’s shame, Dannie,” says he. “She’d run away an’ hide. She––she––told me so.”
I observed my uncle: he was gone with the need of rum––exhausted and unnerved: his face all pallid and splotched. ’Twas a ghastly thing to watch him stump the gravelled walk of our garden in the gray light of that day.
“Uncle Nicholas, sir,” says I, for the moment forgetting the woe of Judith’s hapless state in this new alarm, “do you come within an’ have a dram.”