"'I never knew it was you here,' she says. 'Nobody knows,' she told him.
"'No,' he says, 'I've done my best they shouldn't know. Up till I got sick. Since then—I—wanted folks,' he says.
"I kep' back by the door, an' I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He was older than Calliope, but he had a young air. Like you don't have when you stay in Friendship. An' he seemed to know how to be easy, sick as he was. An' that ain't like Friendship, either. He an' Calliope had growed opposite ways, seems though.
"'I'll go now,' says Calliope, not lookin' at him. 'I brought up some things I baked. I didn't know but they'd taste good to whoever was sick here.'
"With that he covers one hand over his eyes.
"'No,' he says, 'no, no, Calliope—don't go yet. It's you I come here to Friendship to see,' he told her.
"'What could you have to say to me?' asks Calliope—dry as a bone in her voice, but I see her eyes wasn't so dry. Leastwise, it may not have been her eyes, but it was her look.
"Then he straightens up some. He was still good-lookin'. When you was with him it use' to be that you sort o' wanted to stay—an' it seemed the same way now. He was that kind.
"'Don't you think,' he says to her—an' it was like he was humble, but it was like he was proud, too—'don't you think,' he says, 'that I ever dreamed you could forgive me. I knew better than that,' he told her. 'It's what you must think o' me that's kep' me from sayin' to you what I come here to say. But I'll tell you now,' he says, 'I'm sick an' alone an' done for. An' what I come to see you about—is the boy.'
"'The boy,' Calliope says over, not understandin'; 'the boy.'