“If you knowed that, what made you send him off?” Polly wanted to know.
“I jest couldn’t stand the thought of Tom bein’ teched by nobody. None of them chillun ever had a hand laid onto ’em afore, an’ I couldn’t bear that they should—ever!”
“Well, ’tain’t none of my business, of course,” said Polly drily, “but I will say that if Tobe was half a man even, he’d do his part now that you need him so bad.”
“He couldn’t—not after what I said,” Mary protested mournfully. “I told him never to come back no more till Kingdom-come, an’ he said he wouldn’t—not if I begged him on my dyin’ bed!”
“My land, what a mean sperited feller he must be!” Polly exclaimed contemptuously. “I wonder the Lord didn’t punish him for sech talk. In my opinion, Mary, you’re a heap better off without him than you’d be with him.”
Mary’s head drooped very low over her work, but in spite of that Polly saw the tears that fell on the little patched garments. There was a long silence during which Polly hated Tobe Lomux as heartily as she pitied Mary. Then she delivered herself of a bit of advice that had burned within her heart for weeks. “If I was you, Mary, I’d give up an’ let the county take care of me—jest for a little spell. You ain’t able to work another day, an’ to tell you the truth I don’t believe you’ll be let work much longer, ’cause the boss has noticed how bad you look. I’ll git the circuit-rider to speak a good word for you at the poor farm so’s they’ll give you a little shack off to yourself.”
“Oh Polly, I couldn’t go—I couldn’t!” Mary cried chokingly. “For myself it wouldn’t matter what come, but the chillun—they would always be looked down on fer livin’ at a poor farm.”
“What’s to become of ’em if anything bad was to happen to you, I’d like to know?” asked practical Polly. “You’ve done for ’em an’ humored ’em till they’re sorter spoiled. They couldn’t git along with strangers. The poor farm’s the only thing, Mary. I don’t doubt but that you’ll be stout enough by next spring to go back to the farm an’ make a crop, but you won’t if you stay here.”
“I’ll rest up a bit,” said Mary dejectedly. “We can git along on what the boys makes for a few days an’ by that time I’ll be stout enough to go back to work.”
But in that surmise Mary was mistaken. On the fourth day when she resumed her place at the reels, outraged nature succumbed completely to the long strain, and she dropped in a dead faint among her whirling spools. That happened the day before Polly was to go on a long advertised excursion to Atlanta, and, although Mary was quite ill on the eventful morning, Polly did not offer to stay with her friend but hurried through her gala preparations in great excitement. She looked thinner and paler and smaller than ever in her unaccustomed finery.