“Not a word. From first to last I did not hear her open her mouth, Mrs. Flitch. But he talked a right smart. I disremember what he said, but it wa’n’t praisin’. Then he goes out and banged the door after him. He ain’t been here since.” “And she does not hear from him?” “Not as I knows of. Miss Helen left ’reckly after he did, and she was gone five months. But she wa’n’t wid him. We used to git letters from her from a place in Ca’lina.” “Which, North or South Carolina?” “I don’t know, ’m. Buck read the letters.” “This is a strange baby,” Mrs. Flitch announced grimly. Maria wiped her eyes. She was working herself up to an emotional pitch by some act of memory. Mrs. Flitch waited for the revelation she knew must be coming. “I’m goin’ to tell you all I know about how come dis baby. Not as it kin explain somethings, like her having black hair and being dark complected, but it’s all I know,” she began. “Go on.” “After Mr. Cutter was gone, Miss Helen laid in bed three days. She jest laid there, white as a corpse, with her eyes open. She didn’t shed no tears and she didn’t say anything, mor’n for me to hand her a glass of water or somethin’ like that. Then one mornin’ she hops out of bed, dresses herself an’ goes downtown to the bank. While she was dressin’ I comes to the door to fetch her slippers, which I’d been polishin’ in the kitchen.” Maria left off and rolled her eyes lugubriously, as if such a tongue as she had could not reveal the rest. “Go on; what happened?” “Mrs. Flitch,” lowering her voice to a tragic whisper, “she was talkin’ to herself! ‘Now,’ she says, ‘I kin have children.’ She said them words over and over, ’s if she was glad of the chance.” “But what did she mean?” “I d’no, ’m. I been in this world a long time, an’ I ain’t never heerd no ’oman, white or black, say sech things and her husband jest that minute ’sertin’ her. But she’s done it--what she said she’d do. Here’s the child,” she concluded, standing like a black exclamation point beside the baby carriage. Mrs. Flitch counted her fingers surreptitiously and regarded the infant once more with a sort of expert scientific stare. “Where is the maid? I understood Mrs. Cutter had a maid?” she asked suddenly, as if she was on the point of subpoenaing a more competent witness. “She’s gone. Said she didn’t like the looks of it.” “Of what?” “I d’no, ’m.” “Maria,” Mrs. Flitch said after a staccato silence, “you need not tell Mrs. Cutter that I called.” “La! Mrs. Flitch, hit don’t make no difference. This baby ain’t no secret, whatever else it is. Miss Helen don’t keer who knows she’s got it,” Maria called after her. All these months this servant had known what Helen believed no one knew in Shannon, the minutest details of that last scene with her husband.