Page:Teeftallow-1926.djvu/349

unpleasant subject, but finally he did ask the question in a colourless tone:

"What did they say?"

"They told Lizzie they saw a light moving about your second-story windows at night."

"Why, certainly!" cried the jeweller, surprised and irritated, "that was me regulating my watches."

"I told her that, but Lizzie wanted to know why you were regulating watches at night; why you bothered at all to regulate a lot of old watches. I never could make her understand it was just your pastime. We talked about it for a long time." Nessie gave another long sigh. "Finally she said she had to go because her sister was sick; she hated to leave me—niggers always say that."

The middle-aged jeweller stood looking at his young wife with a sort of frustrated tenderness for her and a desire to shield her and keep her looking fresh and flowerlike. The faint veil which maternity had spread over her had been saddening to him; whereas had the child been his own, this change in her appearance would have been pensive and sweet, like the air of an old song.

"I'll get you another cook." Then, after a moment, he said, "if necessary I'll—quit tinkering with the watches."

Nessie shook her head without noticing his renunciation. "I don't think any of them will stay."

"How about a white woman?"

A look almost of fright came into the young woman's face.

"No, Mr. Belshue, don't get a white woman, I—I—" she controlled her voice and gave a reason which was not the real one, "I'm used to nigger servants. . . ."

Her disturbance brought up again to the jeweller's mind the isolation that spread over their two lives and left them marooned here in this old manor, cut off from all companionship.

"Can I do anything to help you now, Nessie?" he asked.

The girl looked around with that lack of administrative ability which reduces work to drudgery.