Without shifting his body he turned his head and over the peak of one shoulder he regarded her dourly. She was a small woman and she was verging on middle age, and she was an exceedingly shabby little woman. Whatever of comeliness she might ever have had was now and forever gone from her. Hard years and the strain of them had ground the colour in and rubbed the plumpness out of her face, leaving in payment therefor deep lines and a loose skin-sac under the chin and hollows in the cheeks. The shapeless, sleazy black garments that she wore effectually concealed any remnant of grace that might yet abide in her body. Only her eyes testified she had ever been anything except a forlorn and drooping slattern. They were big bright black eyes. This briefly was the aspect of the woman who stood alongside him, speaking his name. She had come up so quietly that he never heard her. But then her shoes were old and worn and had lasted long past the age when shoes will squeak. He made no move to raise his hat. Slantwise across the high ridge of his twisted shoulder he looked at her long and contemptuously. “Well,” he said at length, “back ag'in, huh? Well, whut is it now, huh?” She put up a little work-gnarled hand to a tight skew of brown hair streaked thickly with grey. In the gesture was something essentially feminine--something pathetic too. “I reckon you know already what it is, Elmer,” she said. “It's about my boy--it's about Eddie.” “I told you before and I tell you ag'in I ain't your boy's guardeen,” he answered her. “How comes you keep on pesterin' me--I ain't got that boy of yourn?” “Yes, you have got him,” she said, her voice shaking and threatening to break. “You've got him body and soul. And I want him--me, his mother. I want you to give him back to me.” His gaze lifted until he considered empty space a foot above her head. Slowly he reached an angular arm back under his right shoulder blade and fished about there until he had extracted from a hip pocket a long, black rectangle of navy chewing tobacco that was like a shingle newly dipped in creosote. It was a virgin plug--he bought a fresh one every morning and by night would make a ragged remnant of it. With the deliberation of a man who has plenty of time to spare, he set his stained front teeth in a corner of it and gnawed off a big scallop of the rank stuff. His tongue herded it back into his jaw, where it made a lump. He put the plug away. She stood silently through this, kneading her hands together, a most humble suppliant awaiting this monarch's pleasure. “You told me all that there foolishness the other time,” he said. “Ain't you got no new song to sing this time? Ef you have I'll listen, mebbe. Ef you ain't I'll tell you good-by.”