"Quick, quick! Lemme in! Lemme in!" I heard from outside. I knew it was
Mis' Bingy. We got down-stairs just as Pa opened the door, and she come
in. Everything about her was blowing--her long hair and her outing
nightgown and the baby's shawl. She could hardly breathe, and she leaned
against the door and tried to lock it. I went and locked it for her.
She sat down, and the baby was awake and crying, so she jounced it up
and down, without knowing she was doing it, while she told what was the
matter. She twisted up her hair, and I didn't think she knew she done
that, either. She had on a blue calico waist to a work dress, over her
nightgown, and her bare feet were in shoes, with the laces dangling. Ma
took one look at her, and went and put on the teakettle. She said
afterward she never knew she done that, either.
Mis' Bingy told us what happened. She had been laying awake up-stairs
when he come home. He called her, and she didn't answer. Then he brought
a flatiron and beat at the door. Then he yelled that he'd bring the ax.
When he went for it, she slipped out of her bedroom and locked the door,
and hid in the closet under the stairs till she heard him run up 'em.
Then she started.
"He'll kill me," she says. "He said he'd kill me. I've never known him
like this before."
Pa come back from his room, part dressed.
"I'll go and get the constable," he says.
"Oh," says Mis' Bingy, "don't arrest him! Don't do that!"
"Lookin' for to be killed?" says Pa. "And us, too, for a-harborin' you
here?"
She fell to crying then, and the baby cried. Mis' Bingy said things to
herself that we couldn't understand. Ma come and brought her a cup of
hot water with the tea that was left in the teapot poured in it. Ma had
a calico skirt around her shoulders, and she was in her bare feet.
"He'll kill _you_," Ma says to Pa, "on your way to the constable. I
wouldn't go past that house for anything, to-night."
I remember how anxious she looked at him. She was anxious, like Mis'
Bingy'd been when she said not to arrest Keddie.
Pa muttered, but he didn't go out. In a little while, Ma said best get
some rest, so we went up to the room again, and took Mis' Bingy. Her and
Ma laid down on the bed, and I got the canvas cot that was folded up in
there. My feet stuck out, and I couldn't go to sleep. But the funny
thing to me was that both Ma and Mis' Bingy went to sleep in a little
while.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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