“Can you tell me his name, or anything about him? I knew him once.”
She looked blacker than ever at this. It seemed to her guilty conscience like a covert claim to the dead man’s belongings, and she bridled up accordingly.
“I know nothing about him—no more than I know about you.”
“Don’t you know his name?” said Reginald.
“No. Do I know your name? No! And I don’t want to!”
“Don’t be angry,” he said. “No one means any harm to you. How long has he been here?”
“I don’t know. A week. And he was bad when he came. He never caught it here.”
“Did any doctor see him?”
“Doctor! no,” snarled the woman. “Isn’t it bad enough to have a man bring smallpox into a place without calling in doctors, to give the place a bad name and take a body’s living from them? I suppose you’ll go and give me a character now. I wish I’d never took you in. I hated the sight of you from the first.”
She spoke so bitterly, and at the same time so anxiously, that Reginald felt half sorry for her.