Page:My mortal enemy - 1926.djvu/90

 “I’ll go up and see those people to-morrow, Mrs. Henshawe,” I promised. “I’m sure I can do something.”

“Oh, don’t, Nellie!” she looked up at me in affright. “She’d turn a deaf ear to you. You know the Bible says the wicked are deaf like the adder. And, Nellie, she has the wrinkled, white throat of an adder, that woman, and the hard eyes of one. Don’t go near her!”

(I went to see Mrs. Poindexter the next day, and she had just such a throat and just such eyes. She smiled, and said that the sick woman underneath was an old story, and she ought to have been sent to a sanatorium long ago.)

“Never mind, Myra. I’ll get you away from it yet. I’ll manage,” Oswald promised as he settled the pillows under her.

She smoothed his hair. “No, my poor Oswald, you’ll never stagger far under the bulk of me. Oh, if youth but knew!” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over them. “It’s been the