Tom bowed her head. The tears were trickling through her fingers
and falling on the coarse shawl.
"Yis; seven years ago this June." She paused for a moment, as if
the scene was passing before her in every detail, and then went
on: "Whin I come home I niver said a word to anybody but Jennie.
I've niver told Pop yit. Nobody else would have cared; we was
strangers here. The next mornin' I took Jennie,--she was a child
then,--an' we wint over to the city, an' I got what money I had,
an' the doctors helped, an' we buried him; nobody but just us two,
Jennie an' me, walkin' behint the wagon, his poor body in the box.
Whin I come home I wanted to die, but I said nothin'. I was
afraid Schwartz would take the work away if he knew it was only a
woman who was a-doin' it wid no man round, an so I kep' on; an'
whin the neighbors asked about him bein' in a 'sylum an' out of
his head, an' a cripple an' all that, God forgive me, I was afraid
to tell, and I kept still and let it go at that; an' whin they
asked me how he was I'd say he was better, or more comfortable, or
easier; an' so he was, thank God! bein' in heaven."
She roused herself wearily, and wiped her eyes with the back of
her hand. Babcock sat motionless.
"Since that I've kep' the promise to me Tom that I made on me
knees beside his bed the night I lifted him in me arms to take him
downstairs--that I 'd keep his name clean, and do by it as he
would hev done himself, an' bring up the children, an' hold the
roof over their heads.
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