," Aunt
Nita says,' she tells him, '"for your husband. Because you must always
be prettier for him than anybody else is." An', oh, dearest,' she says,
'you know I'd 'a' looked my best for you if I could--but I never
had--an' it wasn't your fault!' she cries out, 'but things didn't go
right. It wasn't anybody's fault. Only--I _wanted_ to look nice for you.
An' since I've been sick,' she says, 'it's made me wretched, wretched to
think I didn't hev nothin' to put on but this black waist--this homely
old black waist. You never liked me to wear black,' I rec'lect she says
to him, 'an' it killed me to think--if anything should happen--you'd be
rememberin' me like this. You think you'd remember me the way I was when
I was well--but you wouldn't,' she says earnest; 'people never, never
do. You'd remember me here like I look now. Oh--an' so I thought--if
there was ever so little money we could spare--won't you get me
somethin'--somethin' so's you could remember me better? Somethin' to
wear these few days,' she says.

"He breaks down then an' cries, with his face in her pillow.

"'Don't--why, don't!' she says to him; 'if there wasn't any money, you
might cry--only then I wouldn't never hev told you. But
now--to-morrow--you can go an' buy me a little dressing-sacque--the kind
they have in the windows on Broadway. Oh, _Jack_!' she says, 'is it
wicked an' foolish for me to want you to remember me as nice as you can?
It ain't--it _ain't_!' she says.

"Then I give out. I felt like a handful o' wet sawdust that's been
squeezed. I slid out an' downstairs, an' I guess I chopped wood near all
night. The Tomato Ketchup's husband he pounded the floor for me to shut
up, an' I told him--though I never was what you might call a impudent
janitor--that if he thought he could chop it up any more soft, he'd
better engage in it. But then the kid woke up, too, an' yelled some, an'
I's afraid she'd hear it an' remember, an' so I quit.

"Nex' mornin' I laid for Mr. Loneway in the hall.

"'Sir,' I says to him when he come down to go out, 'you won't do nothin'
foolish?' I ask' him.

"'Mind your business,' he says, his face like a patch o' poplar ashes.

"I was in an' out o' their flat all day, an' I could see't Mis' Loneway
she's happy as a lark. But I knew pretty well what was comin'. Mind you,
this was the third day.

"That night I hed things goin' in the kitchen an' the kettle on, an' I's
hesitatin' whether to put two eggs in the omelet or t