But when they took Terry home and laid him on her bed, she had wailed
absurdly for the lost lover in him. Through the night her cry had been,
"Ah, Terry, Terry,--ye gev me manny a haird blow, darlin', but ye kep'
th' hairdest til th' last!"
It was not possible to avoid being irritated a little by such a woman,
but I always tried to conceal this from her. I suppose she had a right
to her own play-world. She was dressed now in a limp black of many rusty
ruffles that sagged close to her and glistened in spots through its
rust. Both the dress and the spiritless silk bonnet that circled her
keen little face seemed to have been cried over a long time--to be
always damp with her tears.
With parting injunctions to my namesake to let the cat alone, not to
"track up" the kitchen, and not to play with matches, the little woman
lovingly cuffed the conspiring lesser Sullivans into a decorous line
behind her and marched them off to church. There, I knew, she would give
from her poor wage that the soul of dead Terry should be the sooner
prayed out of a place, which, it would seem, might have been created
with an eye single to his just needs.
Thinking of woman's love,--that, like the peace of God it passeth all
understanding,--I officiated absently as one of two guests at a
"tea-party.
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