"Oh, Man, Man!" she breathed, as his arms closed about her.
***************************************************************** Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910 {pages 74-83}
By Alice MacGowan and Grace MacGowan Cooke
Authors of "Return, A Story of the Sea Islands," etc.
"Is Ellen worse to-day?" The opening and closing of the front door brought in a swirl of red and yellow leaves from the porch outside. There came, too, a breath of sharp, sweet October air to tired little Mrs. Kendrick where she paused, foot on stair, the tray steadied in her hand, looking back at her husband.
"No. It's just that I got Mary Louise Jackson to come over and play with her. I can't ask Aunt Dicey to wait on a negro child like Ma'Lou is, and she's got to eat with Ellen; so I'm——"
"So you're waiting on her yourself," supplied Kendrick, hanging up a shabby overcoat on the hall rack.
"I'd do more than that to keep her here," his wife returned almost fiercely. "I tell you nobody knows till they've tried it what it is to have a child like Ellen, always lonesome and pining for company, and quarreling with every girl that comes about her. Sometimes I think it would be better if we moved away from Watauga. Everybody pities her—they all notice that she's backward in her studies—how can she help it, poor dear, with that hip joint the way it is?"
Kendrick came closer; he laid a kind arm along the frail, bent shoulders of his wife, and her senses were aware of the fresh outdoor air as he put his cool cheek to hers. "Don't you grieve, Fanny," he said. "Ma'Lou's a good companion for Ellen. The kid's better trained and better educated than half the white girls of her age in Watauga. If things go well, in a year or two we'll send Nellie to Baltimore and see what the big man there can do for her. You shall have a daughter that can dance like you used to, honey," and he patted her shoulder gently.
She turned with a little, gasping sigh to put up her tired face for his kiss. "You're good, Scott," she murmured, then went more cheerfully upstairs and to Ellen's room, glancing as she entered at the two girls, who were playing happily with paper dolls.