"No; and don't let me disturb you."
He gave her a closer look and thought that he remembered her as the woman who had taken him on her lap and told him that his father was dead.
"No disturbance at all," she answered. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Yes, I should like to look through this place."
"Very well, but you may find things pretty badly tumbled up. We're cleaning house. Come this way, please."
He saw the corner in which he used to sleep, and there was the same iron bedstead, with a fever-fretted child lying upon it. He thought of the nights when he had cried himself to sleep, and of the mornings when he lay there weaving his fancies while a spider high above the window was spinning his web. There was the same old smell, and he sniffed the sorrow of his childhood.
"How long has this been here?" he asked.
"He was brought here about two weeks ago."
"I mean the bedstead. How long has it been in this corner?"
"Oh, I can't say as to that. I thought you meant the child. I've been here a long time, and I never saw the bedstead anywhere else. It will soon be thirty years since I came here. Do you care to go into any of the other rooms?"