"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up. When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about those lilacs and locusts blooming--I suppose they did, but nobody caught them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas' was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides. I always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet. "We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it--a slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be looked at. "'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy. "'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here--he must of followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.' "Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy. "'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?' And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew off, sort of grudging--she never liked any of us to go there, except when some of them died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him. "The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing. "'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?' "Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top covers. "'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an' forth waitin' on him.' "'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his voice--it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard his voice make a mistake.