"'We got a little money ahead?' she goes on.
"'Bless me, if he didn't do just what I had time to be afraid of. He hauls out them fifty-four dollars an' showed her.
"She claps her hands like a child.
"'Oh, goodey!' she says; 'I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Now I can tell you,' she says to him.
"He took her in his arms an' kneeled down by the bed, an' I tried to slip out, but she called me back. So I stayed, like an' axe in the parlour.
"'John,' she says to him, 'do you know what Aunt Nita told me before I was married? "You must always look the prettiest you know how," Aunt Nita says,' she tells him, '"for your husband. Because you must always be prettier for him than anybody else is." An', oh, dearest,' she says, 'you know I'd 'a' looked my best for you if I could—but I never had—an' it wasn't your fault!' she cries out, 'but things didn't go right. It wasn't anybody's fault. Only—I wanted to look nice for you. An' since I've been sick,' she says, 'it's made me wretched, wretched to think I didn't hev nothin' to put on but this black waist—this homely old black waist. You never liked me to wear black,' I rec'lect she says to him, 'an' it killed me to think—if anything should happen—you'd be rememberin' me like this. You think you'd remember me the way I was when I was well—but you wouldn't,' she says earnest; 'people never, never do. You'd remember me here like I look now. Oh—an' so I thought—if there was ever so little money we could spare—won't you get me somethin'—somethin' so's you could remember me better? Somethin' to wear these few days,' she says.
"He breaks down then an' cries, with his face in her pillow.
"'Don't—why, don't!' she says to him; 'if there wasn't any money, you might cry—only then I wouldn't never hev told you. But now—to-morrow—you can go an' buy me a little dressing-sacque—the kind they have in the windows on Broadway. Oh, Jack!' she says, 'is it wicked an' foolish for me to want you to remember me as nice as you can? It ain't—it ain't!' she says.
"Then I give out. I felt like a handful o' wet sawdust that's been squeezed. I slid out an' downstairs, an' I guess I chopped wood near all night. The Tomato Ketchup's husband he pounded the floor for me to shut up, an' I told him—though I never was what you might call a impudent janitor—that if he thought he could chop it up any more soft, he'd better engage in it. But then the kid woke up, too, an' yelled some, an' I's afraid she'd hear it an' remember, an' so I quit.
"Nex' mornin' I laid for Mr. Loneway in the hall.