And a man’s coarser bass returned from that dark:
“You bet it don’t! Leave it to your uncle!”
“I hope to Gawd nobody spotted you gettin’ in. That ol’ Miss Pease next door puts her eyes on the doorstep when she sleeps, same as she puts out her cat.”
“Naw, I waited until a cloud went over the moon before I left the shadow o’ the fence. But I did knock my shin over a chair in the kitchen. I’ll break that dam’ thing if you leave it in my way again—fell over it last Sunday night, very same way!”
Nathan was too stunned to move. He seemed all at once to have no body, so completely had all physical sensation fled. He might have been a disembodied spirit sitting in that chair—which he was, so far as the man and his wife were concerned. And they thought him six hundred miles away! He waited. He knew Milly was pulling off her gloves and unpinning her hat.
“You didn’t light any lights, did you?” It was Milly’s voice that asked it.
“What th’ hell sort o’ boob do you take me for, Mil? Besides, whatter we need lights for—you an’ me?”
The sofa springs suddenly creaked with Milly’s added weight.
“Gawd, kiss me, honeybunch! Gimme a good old humdinger. There ain’t nobody can raise my hair with kissin’ like you can, Si, or anything else, for that matter. Seems just as if a gorilla had me—and I was perfectly willin’ the gorilla should!”
They kissed.