I turned to find myself alone in the room. Mr. Darton had disappeared as
unexpectedly but more quietly than he had entered. I could hear my
father's footsteps going softly about upstairs; and his voice, which
though quick and crisp, had a soothing quality, talking in a gentle
monotone to some one. After about ten minutes he came to the head of the
steps and called to me.
"Mrs. Darton says will you come up, Tom?"
Knees quivering with the queerness of it all as well as with the icy
frigidity of the hallway, I mounted the uncarpeted stairs.
Following in the direction of the voices, I came to a dark,
low-ceilinged room with a pine bed, on which lay a withered-looking
woman with sparsely lashed eyelids and fine, straight, straw-colored
hair. Near her was a small oblong bundle, wrapped round with a bright
patch-work quilt; and out of this bundle a cry issued. As I peered into
it, a red weazened face stared back at me, the eyes opening startlingly
round. I looked long in wonder. The woman sighed; and, my gaze reverting
to her, I thought suddenly of what a neighbor had once said to my
father, "Selma Perkins used to be the prettiest girl in school. She was
like the first arbutus flowers." Surely this woman with her pallid skin
and her faded spiritless eyes could not have been the one they meant!
There was some talk between my Father and his patient, the gist of which
I could not get, absorbed as I was with the face inside the patch-work
quilt.
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