ike that, darlin'. I--got news--I got
news."

'"S-s-s-s-h, baby, you're all hysterical from overwork and all tired out
from worry. There ain't no need to worry, baby. Quigley'll say it can go
over another week. She ain't dunning for board, she ain't, baby."

"I--oh--I--"

"Shaking all over, baby, just like you got the horrors! I bet you got
scared when you see the snow coming and tackled Ingram to-day, and
you're blue. What you got the horrors about, baby--Ingram?"

"No! No!"

"I told you not to ask the old skinflint. I told you they won't do
nothing after twelve weeks. I ain't bluffed off by snow-storm, Vi. I
don't need South no more'n you do, I don't, baby. I ain't a dead one by
a long shot yet! Vi, for God's sake, why you got the horrors?"

She tried to find words and to smile at him through the hot rain of
her tears, and the deep-rooted sobs that racked her subsided and she
snuggled closer and burrowed into his pillow.

"I--I can't keep it no longer, darlin'. I ain't cryin', I--I 'ain't got
the horrors. I'm laffin'. I--I seen him, Harry--Ingram--I seen him
just before closin', and--and--oh, Harry, you won't believe it, he
said--he--I--I'm laffin' for joy, Harry!"

"What? What, Vi? What?"

She fumbled into the bosom of her blouse and slid a small folded square
of yellowback bill into his hand.

"What? What, Vi? What?"

"A cool hundred, darlin'. Ingram--the Aid Society, because it's
Christmas, darlin'. They opened up--a cool hundred! We--we can light out
To-morrow, darlin'. A cool hundred! Old Ingram, the old skinflint, he
opened up like--like a oyster. South, all of us, to-morrow, darlin'; it
ain't nothing for me to get a job South. When I seen it was snowin'
I'd 'a' killed somebody to get it. I--I had to have it and we got it,
darlin', we--we got it--a cool hundred!"

He lay back on the pillow, suddenly limp, the bill fluttering to the
coverlet, and she slid her arm beneath his head.

"You could have knocked me down, too, darlin'. Easy, just like that he
forked over. 'What's a Aid Society for?' he kept sayin'. 'What's a Aid
Society for?'"

"Vi, I--"

"Don't cry, darlin', don't cry. I just can't stand it!"

"I--"

"'S-s-s-s-h! Easy, just like that he gimme it, darlin'."

"And me lying here hatin' him for a skinflint and his store for a
bloodsucker and the Aid Society for a fake!"

"Yes, yes, darlin'."

"I feel new already, Vi. I can feel the sun already shining through me.
If he was here,