Ain't
I his mother?"
Miss Lady looked at her with amazement, and shrank instinctively from
the desperate, defiant woman.
"That's right!" cried Myrtella, almost beside herself. "Snatch your
hand off my arm, shrink away from me like I was a leper! Tell
everybody, tell the police that I throwed my baby in the ash barrel
and abandoned it! It don't make no difference now, nothin' makes no
difference but Chick. Oh, my God! How long have they been?"
"They will be down very soon now, Myrtella. Don't tear your
handkerchief like that. Here, take mine."
But Myrtella's eyes were too full of terror for tears; she sat with
her hands locked about her knees swaying to and fro.
"I've never told nobody," she went on wildly; "all these years I've
kept it bottled up in my soul 'til it's eat it plumb out. I never done
it to Chick! He wasn't Chick then. He was just somethin' that belonged
to a devil. Then he growed to be Chick, and all my hate turned to
love, and now God's gittin' even, I knowed He would! He wouldn't let
him live now, just to spite me!"
"Myrtella!" Miss Lady's voice commanded indignantly. "Don't you dare
say such things! Who knows but this very minute God's giving Chick
back to you? Perhaps He is taking this way of showing you He forgives
you.
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