r reason distinguishable from the
others, Mrs. Burkhardt stepped up two shallow steps and turned a key in
the center of the door, which set up a buzz on its reverse side. Her hand,
where it clutched the shawl at her throat, was reddening and roughening,
the knuckles pushing up high and white. Waiting, she turned her back to the
wind, her body hunched up against it.

There was a moving about within, the scrape of a match, and finally the
door opening slightly, a figure peering out.

"It's me, Mrs. Scogin--Hanna Burkhardt!"

The door swung back then, revealing a just-lighted parlor, opening, without
introduction of hall, from the sidewalk.

"Well, if it ain't Hanna Burkhardt! What you doin' out this kind of a
night? Come in. Kittie's dryin' her hair in the kitchen. Used to be she
could sit on it, and it's ruint from the scorchin' curlin'-iron. I'll call
her. Sit down, Hanna. How's Burkhardt? I'll call her. Oh, Kittie! Kit-tie,
Hanna Burkhardt's here to see you."

In the wide flare of the swinging lamp, revealing Mrs. Scogin's parlor
of chromo, china plaque, and crayon enlargement, sofa, whatnot, and wax
bouquet embalmed under glass, Mrs. Burkhardt stood for a moment, blowing
into her cupped hands, unwinding herself of shawl, something Niobian in her
gesture.

"Yoo-hoo--it's only me, Kit! Shall I come out?"

"Naw--just a minute; I'll be in."

Mrs. Scogin seated herself on the edge of the sofa, well forward, after the
manner of those who relax but ill to the give of upholstery. She was like a
study of what might have been the grandmother of one of Rembrandt's studies
of a grandmother. There were lines crawling over her face too manifold for
even the etcher's stroke, and over her little shriveling hands that were
too bird-like for warmth. There is actually something avian comes with the
years. In the frontal bone pushing itself forward, the cheeks receding, and
the eyes still bright. There was yet that trenchant quality in Mrs. Scogin,
in the voice and gaze of her.

"Sit down, Hanna."

"Don't care if I do."

"You can lean back against that chair-bow."

"Hate to muss it."

"How's Burkhardt?"

"All right."

"He's been made deacon--not?"

"Yeh."

"If mine had lived, he'd the makin' of a pillar. Once label a man with hard
drinkin', and it's hard to get justice for him. There never was a man had
more the makin' of a pillar than mine, dead now these sixteen years and
molderin' in his grave for justice."

"