"No, she died because the girl went, and I have thought I'd be afraid to go as long as my mother was alive."
He helped her across the rivulet, though it was not more than a foot wide at this place, and a little further on, helped her across again when there was no necessity for it. "It didn't seem to have any influence on the old man, did it?" he remarked.
"The girl goin' to the theatre? Oh, no; it takes more than that to kill a man. Cousin Jim says when he went down to Memphis while the yeller fever was there, he saw the theatre house. He went inside, and the seats were red and soft—softer than the seats in a church, but there wasn't anybody there for all the people that went there were dead with the fever. But I have often wondered if there was so much music and so many flowers how it could be so bad. They say that the angels have harps and that in heaven there is music, but I haven't heard that there is any music at the other place. Oh, did you see that bird almost light on me?"
"Thought you were a flower," Tom replied, helping her across the rivulet again.
"Oh, it didn't. What makes you wanter talk that way for? Look, here is where I used to make my play-house, and here are pieces of the broken dishes yet, and that broken bottle was my bureau. Wait a minute and let me think. There was a little boy played with me and his name was Bud—not a sure enough little boy, but one that I pretended like; and I could hear him talk and he'd say the prettiest things. He lived up there under that big rock and would always come when I called him, but one time a woman come along and she heard me talkin' to him and she couldn't see him with her sort of eyes; and she went down to the house and told mother that I must be crazy, and after this Bud wouldn't come when I called him. That was a long time ago—a year and a half befo' year befo' last. We will go on now."
When they came to the log hut, Tom cried out: "Oh, here is another play-house. Is it yours?"
"No, this is where they grind corn."
He looked in at the low door and marveled at the strangeness of the place, and after a long silence she asked him what he was thinking about and he replied:
"About that little boy. He must have been happy."
"Yes, till that hateful woman came along and killed him. Wasn't she mean? I wonder if hundreds of spirits haven't been killed that way. How beautiful everything is sometimes when we shut our eyes. It is then that we see spirits, but I was sick once and the spirits all got to be old and wrinkled and they'd come up and grin at me; and after that for a long time I was afraid to see things with my eyes shut. Isn't it nice to be as brave as you are?"