HURRT, HURRY
around and a crack in the front big enough to drive a Ford through.
Why you could watch the ceiling come down in the parlor, and all
the upstairs furniture coming down too, bang! bang! bang! Mind
you don't smash it, they says, on the way out! And do you want to
knowwhat I said?" Myrtle placed her crippled hands on her hips and
withher eyes fiercely lit up she went on, raising her voice to a scream \
in order to hear herself above the splintering and crashing of the
house. "I says to them, 'No!' I stood right up to them and I says, 'I
ain't going into that house, not if you give me a million dollars I ain't!
And as for what I think of
you ...
Yes," her lower lip began to
twitch and her voice dropped suddenly, "as for what I think of
you.... " But she was now surrounded by all the important people
in town, including my mother, the minister, and the school-teacher-
a tiny knifish man with a cone-s~aped head and glasses-and realizing
that she had been overheard she was taken by a fit of trembling and
wasunable to go on. "I just got the habit of talking to myself," she
apologized, letting out a choked laugh, and then she began to cry
again,with her head hanging and her red stubs pressed into the hair
overher eyes.
"I have no sympathy with any of them," said the school-teacher.
"They ought to be horse-whipped, they don't want to work." He
strode through the crowd, receiving with a wrinkling of his beagle's
nosetheir murmurs of agreement, tore off a stout black cherry switch
and with little nasal shouts, like a cheer-leader, began to slash at
Myrtle's ankles. "Oh mercy," said Cedric. He giggled a little, then
with a sob turned back to hide his face. "Oh darling," he moaned,
wavinghis fingers in the direction of Myrtle who was now hobbling
towardthe doorway, "It has such dreadful feet!"
My mother was not wholly in sympathy with the school-teacher's
tactics.She pushed her arm under Myrtle's, and half dragging, half
comfortingher, pressed a dollar bill between her thumb and what was
left of her forefinger. "I want you to take this, my dear, and get
yourselfsomething pretty." Without raising her eyes Myrtle took the
moneyand poked it in her shoe.
In the doorway a new difficulty arose, the columns and the
door-frameitself having already collapsed, leaving only an irregular .
spaceno bigger than the entrance to a small kennel for Myrtle to
~ through. However several white-flanneled husbands now sprang
intoaction, lifted Myrtle over the debris on the stoop, and twisted
andheaved her head first into the hall. In less than a minute there
wasnothing to be seen of her but one soleless shoe with the crisp cor-
IICJ'
of a dollar bill sticking out at the side. "It seems rather a pity,"
theminister murmured, looking at my mother. "Yes," she hesitated.
37
