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“Oh, dat I should live to see de day w’en my own chillens wants to drive me away frum ’em! Oh, dat I should live to see dis day!”

Neither of them had ever seen Aunt Sharley weep like this–shaken as she was with great sobs, her head bowed almost to her knees, her bared arms quivering in a very palsy. They tried to comfort her, tried to put their arms about her, both of them crying too. At the touch of their arms stealing about her hunched shoulders she straightened, showing a spark of the spirit with which they were more familiar. She wrenched her body free of them and pointed a tremulous finger at the door. The two sisters stole out, feeling terribly guilty and thoroughly miserable.

It was not the Aunt Sharley they knew who waited upon them that dusk at supper. Rather it was her ghost–a ghost with a black mask of tragedy for a face, with eyes swollen and reddened, with lips which shook in occasional spasms of pain, though their owner strove to keep them firm. With their own faces tear-streaked and with lumps in their throats the girls kept their heads averted, as though they had been caught doing something very wrong, and made poor pretense of eating the dishes that the old woman placed before them. Such glances as they stole at her were sidelong covert glances, but they marked plainly enough how her shoulders drooped and how she dragged herself about the table.

Within a space of time to be measured by hours and almost by minutes she seemed to have aged years.

It was a mute meal and a most unhappy one for the sisters. More than once Aunt Sharley seemed on the point of saying something, but she, too, held her tongue until they had risen up from their places. From within the passageway leading to the rear porch she spoke then across the threshold of the door at the back end of the dining room.

“You, nur nobody else, can’t turn me out of dis house,” she warned them, and in her words was the dead weight of finality. “An’ ef you does, I ain’t gwine leave de premises. Ise gwine camp right dere on de sidewalk an’ dere I means to stay twell de policemens teks me up fur a vagrom. De shame of it won’t be no greater fur me ‘n ’tis fur you. Dat’s all!” And with that she was gone before they could answer, if indeed they had any answer to make.

It was the next day that the Daily Evening News announced the engagement and the date of the marriage, which would follow within four weeks. Congratulations in number were bestowed upon Emmy Lou; they came by telephone and in letters from former schoolmates, but mainly they came by word of mouth from townspeople who trooped in to say the things which people always say on such occasions–such things, for example, as that young Mr. Winslow should count himself a lucky man and that Emmy Lou would make a lovely bride; that he should be the proudest young man in the Union and she the happiest girl in the state, and all the rest of it. Under this outpouring of kindly words from kindly folk the recipient was radiant enough to all appearances, which was a tribute to her powers as an actress. Beneath the streams of her happiness coursed sombre undercurrents of distress and perplexity, roiling the waters of her joy and her pride.

For nearly a week, with no outsider becoming privy to the facts, she endured a situation which daily was marked by harassing experiences and which hourly became more intolerable. Then, in despair, seeing no way out at all, she went to a certain old white house out on Clay Street to confide in one to whom many another had turned, seeking counsel in the time of trouble. She went to see Judge William Pitman Priest, and she went alone, telling no one, not even Mildred, of the errand upon which she was bound.