“Go teh hell an’ good riddance.”
She went.
Jimmie had an idea it wasn’t common courtesy
for a friend to come to one’s home and ruin
one’s sister. But he was not sure how
much Pete knew about the rules of politeness.
The following night he returned home from work at
rather a late hour in the evening. In passing
through the halls he came upon the gnarled and leathery
old woman who possessed the music box. She was
grinning in the dim light that drifted through dust-stained
panes. She beckoned to him with a smudged forefinger.
“Ah, Jimmie, what do yehs t’ink I got
onto las’ night. It was deh funnies’
t’ing I ever saw,” she cried, coming close
to him and leering. She was trembling with eagerness
to tell her tale. “I was by me door las’
night when yer sister and her jude feller came in
late, oh, very late. An’ she, the dear,
she was a-cryin’ as if her heart would break,
she was. It was deh funnies’ t’ing
I ever saw. An’ right out here by me door
she asked him did he love her, did he. An’
she was a-cryin’ as if her heart would break,
poor t’ing. An’ him, I could see
by deh way what he said it dat she had been askin’
orften, he says: ‘Oh, hell, yes,’
he says, says he, ‘Oh, hell, yes.’”
Storm-clouds swept over Jimmie’s face, but he
turned from the leathery old woman and plodded on
up-stairs.
“Oh, hell, yes,” called she after him.
She laughed a laugh that was like a prophetic croak.
“‘Oh, hell, yes,’ he says, says
he, ‘Oh, hell, yes.’”
There was no one in at home. The rooms showed
that attempts had been made at tidying them.
Parts of the wreckage of the day before had been
repaired by an unskilful hand. A chair or two
and the table, stood uncertainly upon legs.
The floor had been newly swept. Too, the blue
ribbons had been restored to the curtains, and the
lambrequin, with its immense sheaves of yellow wheat
and red roses of equal size, had been returned, in
a worn and sorry state, to its position at the mantel.
Maggie’s jacket and hat were gone from the
nail behind the door.
Jimmie walked to the window and began to look through
the blurred glass. It occurred to him to vaguely
wonder, for an instant, if some of the women of his
acquaintance had brothers.
Suddenly, however, he began to swear.
“But he was me frien’! I brought
’im here! Dat’s deh hell of it!”
He fumed about the room, his anger gradually rising
to the furious pitch.
“I’ll kill deh jay! Dat’s
what I’ll do! I’ll kill deh jay!”
He clutched his hat and sprang toward the door.
But it opened and his mother’s great form blocked
the passage.
“What deh hell’s deh matter wid yeh?”
exclaimed she, coming into the rooms.
Jimmie gave vent to a sardonic curse and then laughed
heavily.
“Well, Maggie’s gone teh deh devil!
Dat’s what! See?”
