Out in the kitchen, I, having wrapped two nice slices of spice cake and put them in Miss Mayhew's hand, looked up at her and was shook up considerable to see that her eyes were filled with tears.
I know I'm real blunt when I'm embarrassed or trying to be funny, but when it comes to tears I'm more to home. So I just put my hand on the girl's shoulder and waited for her to speak.
"It's nothing," Miss Mayhew says back to the question I didn't ask. "I—I—" she sobbed out quite open. "I'm all right," she ends, and put up her head like a banner.
To the two women in my sitting-room I didn't say a word of that moment, when I went back to them. But what I did say acted kind of electric.
"Now," says I, "day before yesterday was my sweeping day for the chambers. But I hated to disturb her, she set there scribbling so hard when I stuck my head in. She ain't been out of the house since. If you'll excuse me, I'll whisk right up there and sweep out now."
The women begun folding their work.
"Why, don't hurry yourselves!" I says. "Sit and visit till I get through, why don't you?"
"Go!" says Mis' Toplady. "We ain't a-going. We're going to help."
"I been dying to get up-stairs in that room ever since I see her fix it up," Miss Holcomb lets out, candid.
Miss Mayhew's room—she'd been renting my front chamber for a month now—was little and bare, but her daintiness was there, like her saying something. And the two women began looking things over—the books, the pictures—"prints," Miss Mayhew called them—the china tea-cups, the silver-topped bottles, and the silver and ivory toilet stuff.