As Kitty had formerly found Louie, so Louie now found Kitty--in bed.
Her muteness as long as Mrs. Hickley remained in the room seemed
obstinate, _voulu_; the rapid speech into which she broke without
preface when her cousin's step had ceased to sound on the stairs
confirmed some vague impression of secretiveness. Louie was uneasy at
the change in her.
"You're not to talk about it," Kitty said, the words falling one over
the other; "that's what the doctor meant, though of course he didn't
know what it was. And Mr. Folliott too--the Reverend Mr. Folliott of
St. Peters. He gave me the address in Cliftonville, quite the best end
of the town; there's such a lot in a good address, don't you think?
You know Margate?"
"How are you, dear?" said Louie gently. "Yes, your cousin told me you
were going away for a bit."
"Right away," said Kitty. "I can, you see; I haven't got to work if I
don't want to; though I'm not rich, of course. Neither is Annie, but I
don't like to see men doing the housework like Cousin Frank for all
that. I've told Frank so again and again. '_Be_ an agent,' I've said
time after time; 'for typewriters, or mangles, or tea, or anything you
like, but get out of the house; it isn't a man's place.' And it
isn't.... You've heard?" she broke off suddenly to say.
She blinked at Louie. Her neck above her nightgown was hardly more
substantial than that of a chicken; her hands seemed to have become
as veined as a skeleton leaf. Louie took one of them.
"Always running errands and setting the table--it isn't a man's life,"
Kitty continued. "'What does agent _mean_?' I said to him. 'Pull
yourself together and _make_ it mean something, Frank!' I said.
'You're not very big, but you're strong, and you've got your wits
about you,' I said.... You've heard?" she demanded once more.
"Well, tell me how you are," said Louie, patting the thin hand
soothingly.
"But have you heard the news? Glad tidings for all. 'Come unto Me, and
I will give you rest'--that's what we all want--rest; though why they
should print 'Come' in red and 'unto' in green and 'Me' in purple, and
all the letters like twigs, I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear. And
always Oxford frames. I must ask Mr. Folliott. 'Though your sins be as
crimson----'"
"You haven't asked how my little boy is, Kitty," said Louie.
"'Suffer the little children, and forbid them not'--how is he?"
But she did not wait for an answer. She was off again--the doctor, the
Reverend Mr. Folliott, her approaching visit to Margate. And always
she returned to the indignity of a man's doing women's work about the
house. It was in this connection that she suddenly mentioned, in a way
that gave Louie a slight start, the name of Mr. Jeffries.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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