How's
Petunia's hair curlin' this mornin'?"
After the child left him he tried to prepare his dinner, but it was
as unsatisfactory a meal as breakfast had been. He couldn't eat,
he couldn't work. He could only think, and thinking meant
alternate periods of delirious hope and black depression. He sat
down before the little table in his living-room and, opening the
drawer, saw Ruth Armstrong's pictured face looking up at him.
"Jed! Oh, Jed!"
It was Maud Hunniwell's voice. She had entered the shop and the
living-room without his hearing her and now she was standing behind
him with her hand upon his shoulder. He started, turned and looked
up into her face. And one glance caused him to forget himself and
even the pictured face in the drawer for the time and to think only
of her.
"Maud!" he exclaimed. "Maud!"
Her hair, usually so carefully arranged, was disordered; her hat
was not adjusted at its usual exact angle; and as for the silver
fox, it hung limply backside front. Her eyes were red and she held
a handkerchief in one hand and a letter in the other.
"Oh, Jed!" she cried.
Jed put out his hands. "There, there, Maud!" he said. "There,
there, little girl."
They had been confidants since her babyhood, these two. She came
to him now, and putting her head upon his shoulder, burst into a
storm of weeping.
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