"Serious," he says over. "Serious? But, Miss Marsh, can you give me any idea—"
"I've give you a hint," says I, "that it's something you'd ought to be mighty careful about. I dunno's I can do much more; I dunno's I ought to do that. But if anything should happen—"
"Good heavens!" he says. "You don't think she's that bad off?"
"—if anything should happen," I went on, calm, "I didn't want to have myself to blame for not having spoke up in time. Now," says I, brisk, "you were just going downtown. And I've got a taste of jell I want to take over to her. So I won't keep you."
He got up, looking so near like a tree that's had its roots hacked at that I 'most could have told him that I didn't mean the kind of death he was thinking of at all. But I didn't say anything more. And he thanked me, humble and grateful and scared, and went off downtown. He looked over to the cottage, though, when he shut my gate—I noticed that. She wasn't anywhere in sight. Nor she wasn't when I stepped up onto her porch in a minute or two with a cup-plate of my new quince jell that I wanted her to try.
"Hello," I says in the passage. "Anybody home?"
There was a little shuffle and she came out of the dining-room. There was a mark all acrost her cheek, and I judged she'd been lying on the couch out there crying.
"Get a teaspoon," says I, "and come taste my new receipt."
She came, lack-luster, and like jell didn't make much more difference than anything else. We sat down, cozy, in the hammock, me acting like I'd forgot everything in the world about what had gone before. I rattled on about the new way to make my jell and then I set the sample on the sill behind the shutter and I says: