Page:Hopkinson Smith--Tom Grogan.djvu/244

 said Babcock in astonishment, sinking back in his chair.

Tom bowed her head. The tears were trickling through her fingers and falling on the coarse shawl.

“Yis; seven years ago this June.” She paused for a moment, as if the scene was passing before her in every detail, and then went on: “Whin I come home I niver said a word to anybody but Jennie. I've niver told Pop yit. Nobody else would have cared; we was strangers here. The next mornin' I took Jennie,—she was a child then,—an' we wint over to the city, an' I got what money I had, an' the doctors helped, an' we buried him; nobody but just us two, Jennie an' me, walkin' behint the wagon, his poor body in the box. Whin I come home I wanted to die, but I said nothin'. I was afraid Schwartz would take the work away if he knew it was only a woman who was a-doin' it wid no man round, an so I kep' on; an' whin the neighbors asked about him bein' in a 'sylum an' out of his head, an' a cripple an' all that, God forgive me, I was afraid to tell, and I kept still and let it go at that; an' whin they asked me how he was I'd say he