The two women opened the door into the “front” room. The blinds were tightly drawn and the musty odor testified to its lengthy isolation.
“MY LAND! look at that, will you?”
Mrs. Prentis pointed to a cheap colored glass on the center-table, which held a pitiful little bouquet of one immortelle, six pale spears of a rank grass and a carefully-cut-out letterhead of a printed spray of orange blossoms.
“Who’d a thought of tryin’ to make a bouquet out o’ that? I remember, when we were back in Tennessee, that Mamie was always findin’ the first deer’s tongues and other kinds of little early flowers. Us big girls always helped fill her little hands. Seemed like she never could get all she wanted. An’ then think of livin’ out here where there ain’t water enough for things that has to have it, let alone flowers. Why, I remember one summer when we even saved the dishwater to use several times, and then fed it to the pigs ’cause water was so scarce.”
“Yes; the way farmer’s wives have to worry ’long, ’tain’t much wonder so many of ’em go crazy. I read in th’ paper that was ’round a bundle that come from the store that a bigger part of farmers’ wives went crazy than any other kind of women.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that too. Let’s jes’ step in an’ pick up in the bedroom, and then sweep both these rooms out together. The wind’s in th’ right direction.”
“Yes, you come with me. We—we could get done sooner, workin’ together.”
“That must be the pallet an’ this th’ pillow. They say the baby had been dead for several hours when Jed found it.”
“Yes, an’ Mamie settin’ out there in the barn door, with her head in her lap. Not cryin’ nor nothin’.”