There was a pause.
"You heard Dr. Bowdler say he was married. Do you know his wife?" she asked.
Some strange doubts had been in Andy's brain for the last hour, but he never told a secret.
"It was in the market I come, to know Mr. Starke," he said, confusedly. "At the eatin'-stalls. He never said to me as he hed a wife."
The rain was heavy and constant when it came, a muddy murkiness in the air that bade fair to last for a day or more. Evening closed in rapidly. Andy sat still on the porch; he could shuffle his heels as he pleased there, and take a sly bit of tobacco, watching, through a crack between the houses, the drip, drip, of rain on the umbrellas going by, the lamps beginning to glow here and there in the darkness, listening to the soggy footfalls and the rumble of the streetcars.
"This is tiresome,"—putting one finger carefully under the rungs of his chair, where he had the lantern. "I wonder ef Jane is waiting for me,—an' for any one else."
He trotted one foot, and chewed more vehemently. On the verge of some mystery, it seemed to him.
"Ef it is—What ef he misses, an' won't go back with me? God help the woman! What kin I do?"
After a while, taking out the lantern, and rubbing it where the damp had dimmed it,—