"SUE DAWSON."
He refolded the letter, put it with quivering fingers back into its envelope, and then opened the newspaper and held it before his eyes. There was a clatter of dishes and pans in the back part of the house. A negro woman was out in the wood-yard, picking up chips and singing a low camp-meeting hymn. Now and then some one would tramp over the resounding floor, through the hall to the dining-room.
Harriet went to the door and closed it. Then she turned to him. The paper had slipped from his fingers and lay across his breast.
"What shall I get for your breakfast?" she asked. She moved round on the other side of the bed, wondering if it was the yellow morning light or his physical weakness that gave his face such a depressed, ghastly look.
"What did you say?" He stared at her absently.
"What would you like for breakfast?"
He looked towards his coat that hung on the foot of his bed.
"Don't bother about me; I'm going to get up."
"No, you must not." She caught his wrist. "Look how you are quivering; you ought not to have tried to read."
He raised the paper again, but it shook so that its rustling might have been heard across the room. She took it from him, and laid it on a chair by the bed. She looked away; the corners of his mouth were drawn down piteously and his lips were twitching.