I always wanted everybody to tell the truth, but that woman sort of undressed it, and then told it. And it made a little hush, there in the hall.
Mis' Carney's house was big and still. She took me to a bedroom at the back, looking out on a square garden. The furniture was white, with rose-buds on, and there were gray and pink rugs on the floor. The light colored rugs seemed so wonderful—just as if it didn't matter if they did get soiled, no more than towels. Nor not so much so. On the wall was a little picture of a boat with a bright-colored sail, on a real blue sky. The minute I see it, the whole thing kind of come over me. And I begun to cry.
"Oh, Mis' Carney," I says, "we got a picture in the parlor, home. But it don't look like that."
"Is that what you are crying for?" she asked.
"No," I says, "I don't think so. I was thinking about the bed. Mother and I looked at one in a show-window, once."
I remembered how Mother had stood and looked at it, all made up clean and pretty, even after I was tired and wanted to go on.
Saturday morning we went shopping. I'd never been down-town before when I wasn't walking fast to get somewheres. This was the first time I had ever looked. Everywhere there were people, hurrying and thinking.
"Look in this window, Cosma," Mis' Carney said as we went in a store. "How would you like that shade?"
But the man that was fixing the things looked like a man that sold mackintoshes at the county fair, and I watched him.