"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit—away off, lak."
The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her arm.
Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman, wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo' Gawd, Mars' Milt—" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He—he use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment, then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars' Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very flavor of her son's ingratitude.
A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the huge negress.
The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter, unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head- line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.