“‘Mis’ Curtis,’ says I, ‘Rhody’ll not trouble you long; and it’s my belief,’ says I, ‘you’ve hurried her into her grave.’
“‘It’s no sich thing,’ says she. ‘I waited on her as good as if she was my own; but I had lots to do to-day, an’ I tole her this mornin’ I was done packin’ victuals up stairs for a lazy trollop like her, an’ she could come down to dinner if she wanted any. She’s plenty able to, Nancy Riley, an’ it’s my ’pinion she didn’t take half care of that baby. An’ she set Jim agin me. He’s fixin’ to go off to live by hisself.’
“I jes’ turned round and left her, an’ she bounced up an’ says to one of the women, ‘I spect you’re all hungry, an’ I’ll get supper’; an’ in spite of all they could do, to work she went.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Johnson, “the madder she got the harder she’d work, an’ a mighty good worker, too, she was; but how did that poor Rhody get along?”
“Well, she lay quiet all that mornin’, but about the middle of the afternoon she roused up and seemed to know me an’ Jim, an’ asked for the baby.
“‘It’s down stairs, Rhody,’ says I.
“She looked at me so queer.
“‘Is it?’ she said. ‘Mother was mad, Jim, an’ wouldn’t come up stairs; an’ baby was so sick, an’ I tried to call her, an’ I couldn’t make her hear, an’ then I tried to go down stairs an’ I couldn’t, an’ baby got so stiff and cold, an’ I couldn’t get him warm.’ An’ then, O Mis’ Johnson, she began to scream again. It was awful, but after a while she was still again for several hours, an’ I tried to get Jim to lay down, but he wouldn’t leave her; an’ his mother come up for him to get him to go down an’ eat somethin’, but he jes’ looked at her, an’ she went an’ left him.