"Well, I am including myself," Jane said. "You may call that catty, but I don't. What is the use to plaster facts over? Between you and me, I simply don't believe John would take to a fast girl. If there ever was a boy that gave fast girls the cold shoulder, John Trott did. I always thought he was blind, anyway—going about with his figuring and blue papers with white lines on them. The way he hauled his money out and threw it at us proved he never stopped to think what he was doing. Yes, that little wife is the right sort, and I myself don't see how—well, how he could have brought her right here, you understand. You think so, too, and that is what is bothering you. You won't admit it, but that is the nigger in your woodpile, Liz! My! how easy I feel when I'm unstrapped! The doctor laid the law down on that when I was sick the last time, you know, but how can I walk through Main Street looking—?"
"For God's sake, dry up!" Lizzie suddenly shot out. "What am I going to do? How can I get along without his help, and he can't help me and keep up a separate house. Must—must I go over there? Do you think I—I ought to call? Doesn't it look like—like he means something by—by keeping it a secret? It wasn't sudden, for Dora says he told her some time back."
"Go over there? Huh! You make me smile, Liz. You didn't even get an invitation to the wedding, or a chance to make a present, and yet you are bothered about whether you ought to call or not. As for me, I'll not put foot across his door-sill—not even if he asked me. No, not even if he come begging me on bended knee. Huh! I guess not!"
"And why not?" Lizzie Trott asked, after a momentous pause.
"Because"—and as she answered Jane's eyes held a steely gleam as from some inner light of self-accusation that refused to be quenched even by fear of giving offense—"because if he did ask me I'd know the poor boy was still blind to what everybody else knows and what he would have known long ago if he had been as coarse as other men, or if folks had not liked him too much to talk plain to him. No, I'll not go there. I wouldn't know what to say, nohow. Huh! You wouldn't, either, I'll bet."
"You are not helping me much." Lizzie Trott readjusted the imitation tortoise-shell comb in her rather lifeless hair and gave a sigh, which was followed by a moan, half of anger, half of despair.
"I think I can take a nap now," Jane said. "I feel drowsy-like. If—if you have finished, I wish you would pull the shades down. Tell Dora I don't want anything to eat and not to bring it up. She will wake me if she does."
Mrs. Trott rose sullenly and drew the shades down. She cast a parting look at Jane, and was on the threshold when from the bed came these words:
"Liz, do me a favor, please do, like a good girl. If Jim Stacy comes again, don't let him know I'm up here. Tell him some lie—tell him I am in Atlanta. He is dead broke and always drinking and jealous. I'm too sick to talk to him, and, sick or not, he'd come right up. I've got to get rid of him, that is certain."
Making some sort of promise, Lizzie went into her own room and sat down in a rocking-chair. Nervously she swung back and forth for a few minutes, and then sat still, her eyes fixed on vacancy.