her I wanted to or not. For Mother Duda
had been very honest with me, and the minute she found that I could walk
again had told me that I would have to have great patience if I lived
with her, and endure a very disagreeable sight. Then she pulled off her
shawl and I saw her as she was and almost screamed, she looked so horrid
to me, but I didn't quite, for her eyes wouldn't let me. They seemed to
ask me not to care, but to love her a little though she was a fright to
look at, and I tried but I couldn't, I could only keep from screaming.

"She had a goitre; that is what she called it, and the great pocket of
flesh hanging down on either side of her neck frightened me. It
frightened everybody; she was used to that, but she said she loved me and
felt my fear more than she did others. Could I bear to live with her,
knowing what her shawl hid? If I could she would be good to me, but if I
couldn't she would do what she could to get me honest work in some other
place. I didn't answer at first, but I did before she had put her shawl
on again. I told her that I would forget everything but her good smile,
and stay with her a little while. I stayed three years, helping her by
going about and selling the tatting work she made.

"She could make beautiful patterns and so neat, but she couldn't sell
them, on account of her awful appearance. So I was very useful to her,
and felt I was earning my meat and drink and the kind looks and words
which made them taste good. It taught me a lot, going around. I saw
people and how they lived and what was nice and what wasn't. I was only
sorry that Mother Duda couldn't go too. She loved pretty things so. But
she never went out except at a very early hour in the morning, so early
that it was still dark. It seemed a terrible hour to me, but she always
came in with a smile, and when one day I asked her why, she said, because
she saw so many other poor creatures out at this same hour, who were
worse to look at than she was. This didn't seem possible to me, and once
I went out with her to see. But I never went again. Such faces as we met;
such deformity--men who never showed themselves by day--women who loved
beauty and were hideous. We saw them on street corners--coming up cellar
steps, slinking in and out of blind alleys--never where it was light--and
they shrank from each other, but not from the policeman. They were not
afraid of his eye; they were used to him and he to them. After I had
passed a do