When she reached Barney's house she went around and knocked at
the side door. As she went into the yard she could see dimly a
white-capped woman's head in a south window of the Thayer house
farther down the road, and she knew that Rebecca's nurse was watching
her. Rebecca's second baby was a week old, so she could do nothing
for her brother.
Charlotte knocked softly and waited. She heard a loud clamping step
across the floor inside, and a whistle. A boy opened the door and
stood staring at her, half abashed, half impudently important, his
mouth still puckered with the whistle.
"Is there anybody here but you, Ezra?" asked Charlotte.
The boy shook his head.
"I have come to take care of Mr. Thayer now," said Charlotte.
She entered, and Ezra Ray stood aside, rolling his eyes after her as
she went through the kitchen. He whistled again half involuntarily, a
sudden jocular pipe on the brink of motion, like a bird. Charlotte
turned and shook her head at him, and he stopped short. He sat down
on a chair near the door, and dangled his feet irresolutely.
Charlotte went into the bedroom where Barney lay, a rigidly twisted,
groaning heap under a mass of bed-clothing, which Ezra Ray had kept
over him with energy. She bent over him. "I've come to take care of
you, Barney," said she. His eyes, half dazed in his burning face,
looked up at her with scarcely any surprise.
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