Gibbons stopped and picked up the baby, who at the sound of voices
had crawled into the room, I did not wonder at its croupy cough.
Down the dark and narrow passageway Bettina and I followed our
hostess, and at its end I would have stumbled over a step had I not
been warned in time. The noise made by a box overturned by Bettina
gave the latter opportunity to give me one more injunction.
"Don't promise to do too much right off." The whisper was
uncomfortably clear. "She's the kind who's like a sifter. You have
to be right hard with people like that-- Take care! There's another
step!"
CHAPTER VIII
As we entered the kitchen, a tiny room with one window in it, I
glanced around it as I had done at the front room, the two seeming to
complete the suite occupied by Mrs. Gibbons. My survey was quick and
cautious, but not too much so for mental noting of the conservation
of time and space and labor represented by an arrangement of
household effects I had never seen before. Health and comfort were
the principal omissions.
In one corner of the room was a bed covered with a calico quilt of
many colors, and under it a pallet, tucked away for convenience in
the daytime, but obviously out at night.
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