“But somehow, after Jim had got to sleep of nights, things seemed a heap lonesomer. Mebby if we’d lived nearer to the neighbors ’twould ’a’ helped some. ’Twas so awful still, nights, out where we lived; an’ the moon come in at the winder so white an’ all....
“Times, just before dawn, I’d git to wonderin’ if it would ’a’ happened if I’d ’a’ been out in the front yard, a-watchin’ out for the childern, instead of washin’ back in the kitchen. And I’d git to shakin’ all over an’ couldn’t stop. Once I waked Jim up and begged him to talk to me; but he said it wouldn’t help none for two of us to be losin’ our sleep, so I never done it any more. Jim always was sensible.
“At last I got so the work ’round the house dragged on me until I was afraid I couldn’t git things done. I told Jim about it and he was sorry. But he said a woman’s work didn’t matter so much—it could be let go—but a man had to make the livin’.
“Even with the work and all, I never wanted night to come. I’d git all scared when it come on dusk. Jim didn’t like it. He said it wasn’t no way to welcome a man home after a hard day’s work; an’ it wasn’t. I done my best, but somehow I couldn’t laugh much or be lovin’; so Jim took to drivin’ to town after supper was over. He hadn’t never done that before the children was killed.
“Some times he’d stay real late. Me not bein’ used to bein’ left alone made it worse, too. Sometimes I’d git so tired waitin’ up for him I’d feel like I could go to sleep right then. But of course I couldn’t, account of havin’ to rub his head. You see, he’d got to dependin’ on it, an’, as he said, a man had to have his sleep or he couldn’t work.
“All this time, Doctor, I was lovin’ Jim an’ tryin’ to git along the best I could. I knowed I’d been lucky to git Jim. He was a good man. He never took tantrums like Pa. We’d never dared cross Pa at home ’cause he was excitable-like; an’ finally he went crazy. They would a-took him to the asylum, I reckon, only he died.
“Mebby I’d ’a’ got so’s I could a-slept after a while, only ’bout this time it come on to October, when the fall winds begin to blow, an’ the house would creak of nights—kind of little breakin’ noises like babies whisperin’.... An’ the shadows of the leaves on our big tree outside the winder kept twistin’ about on the walls like little hands a-pushin’ against coffin lids, a-tryin’ to git out an’ go back an’ find their mammy’s breasts.”
She stopped abruptly and stood in tense stillness—as if she were back in that hushed house of sorrow, with its sharp noises and its tiny, mother-seeking shadow-hands upon the walls—listening to the silence, the unendurable silence, of the waning hours.
Doctor Maynard made a restless movement. With a start, the woman came back to realities and turned to us once more.