In munching the cake the child forgot that she had not finished what she had started to say, and with bated breath and lips grimly tense Tilly reminded her of her omission.
"Oh yes, about that fuss!" Dora swallowed as she resumed. "Bill ripped her up for scolding about me. He said that it was a shame the way I was treated, and that if something wasn't done right off—me sent to school and fed and clothed better—he was going to court about it. Lord! Lord! how mad Aunt Jane was, and Liz, too! They said he was trying to make trouble. That was a month ago. Huh! I think they are right! What business is it to that old pot-bellied duck what I do or don't do? He is no kin of mine and I don't want to go to school, either. I tried it once, and that was enough for me. Sat on a bench all day, with a prissy old maid making me hold a book before my face."
Dora declined a third piece of cake without thanks other than a gesture of repletion as she placed her hand on her stomach, smiled, and shook her unkempt head.
"No. I'd make myself sick," she said. "I'll take a drink of water, though. I seem to feel lumps of it lodged in my chest. I reckon I put in too much at once. If I had wine, now— But of course that is out of the game."
Tilly supplied the water. Her heart was as heavy as lead. She was afraid to admit that she believed the terrible thing which, like the bile of some all-inclosing disease, was oozing into her consciousness. She led the child into the sitting-room and listlessly invited inspection of this or that article—the few photographs on the table, a china vase holding flowers, a new Bible which was the inscribed wedding-present of the minister's wife, and some other things which to Tilly now seemed to weep in sheer sympathy for her under the horror which brooded over her. But she fought off the suspicion. It couldn't be—it mustn't be.
"My mother-in-law—Mrs. Trott—John's mother," she stammered in the effort to speak unconcernedly. "Being a widow, she will need money, help from me and John, won't she? Don't you think so, Dora?"
"No, Aunt Jane says no," answered the child, making a wry face as she looked at a picture of Tilly's father. "Gee! what an old pie-faced hayseed this is! For the Lord's sake, who is it?"
"But why won't she need it?" Tilly had heard the question, but did not want to spare the time for a reply which might or might not embarrass her iconoclastic guest. "John has been giving her part of his wages, hasn't he?"
"Yes, but he has to call a halt somewhere, my aunt says. She says Liz can get all the money she needs if she won't throw it away as fast as she gets it and play her cards so she won't be fined so often."
"Fined?" The word fell from Tilly's irresolute lips in sheer dread of further revelations. "Fined! What do you mean?"