s a woman's voice, and it wasn't Miss
Estelle's.

"But I MUST see them before we go, Henry," she says.

And the other was a man's voice and it wasn't no one around our house.

"But, my God," he says, "suppose you get it yourself, Jane!"

I set up straight then, fur Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.

"You mean suppose YOU get it," she says. I like to of seen the look she
must of give him to fit in with the way she says that YOU. He didn't say
nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, and
she says, low and slow: "Henry, wouldn't you love me if I DID get it?
Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?"

"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would. Nothing can change the way
I feel. YOU know that." He said it quick enough, all right, jest the way
they does in a show, but it sounded TOO MUCH like it does on the stage
to of suited me if _I_'D been her. I seen folks overdo them little talks
before this.

I listens some more, and then I sees how it is. This is that musician
feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with
him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that.
They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em
don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: "It must be late. I bet they
was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here
first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She jest simply couldn't
get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see
Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night?
And even if she tries jest to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot
he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it."

And then I thinks, suppose she IS ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a
woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even
if they is a quarantine onto it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched
seeing them, how would any one know she was going to run off? And ain't
she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her
over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late?

Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby
I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated
me purty white. And then I thinks: "I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle.
So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's
coming to him, nohow. And as fur HER, you got to let some