“Maw said tell ’im ter come in thar.” Laramore went into the front room and turned into a small apartment adjoining. It was windowless and dark, the only light filtering through the front room. On a low, narrow bed beneath a ladder leading to a trap-door above, lay a woman.
“Here I am, Luke,” she cried out, excitedly. “Don’t stumble over that pan o’ water! I’ve been taking a mustard footbath to try an’ git my blood warm. La, me! How you did take me by surprise! I’ve prayed for little else in many er yeer, an’ I was jest about ter give it up.”
His foot touched a three-legged stool, and he drew it to the head of her bed and sat down. He took one of her hard, thin hands and bent over her. Should he kiss her? She had not taught him to do so when he was a child, and he had never kissed her in his life, but he had seen the world and grown wiser. He turned her face toward him and pressed his lips to hers. She was much surprised, and drew herself from him and wiped her mouth with a corner of the sheet, but he knew she was pleased.
“Why, Luke, what on earth do you mean? Have you gone plumb crazy?” she said, quickly.
“I wanted to kiss you, that’s all,” he said, awkwardly. They were both silent for a moment, then she spoke, tremblingly: “You al’ays was womanish an’ tender-like; it don’t do a body any harm; none o’ the rest ain’t that way. But, my stars! I cayn’t tell a bit how you look in this pitch dark. Mary! oh, Mary!”
Laramore released his mother’s hand, and sat up erect as the girl came to the door.
“What you want, maw?”
“I cayn’t see my hand’fore me; I wish you’d fetch a light heer. You ‘ll find a piece o’ candle in the clock; I hid it there to keep Jake from usin’ it in his lantern.”
The girl lit the bit of tallow-dip, and fastened it in the neck of a bottle. She brought it in, stood it on a box filled with cotton-seed and ears of corn, and shambled out. Laramore’s heart sank as he looked around him. The room was nothing but a lean-to shed walled with upright slabs and floored with puncheons. The bedstead was a crude wooden frame supported by perpendicular saplings fastened to floor and rafters. The cracks in the wall were filled with mud, rags, and newspapers. Bunches of dried herbs hung above his head, and piles of old clothing and agricultural implements lay about indiscriminately. Disturbed by the light, a hen flew from her nest behind a dismantled loom, and with a loud cackling went out at the door.
The old woman gazed at him eagerly. “You hain’t altered so overly much,” she observed, “‘cept yore skin looks mighty white, and yore hands feel soft.”