omes to the door and beckons to him, the nurse does. He tiptoes
toward her, and she says to him, very low-voiced, that "it is all over."
Meaning the kid has quit struggling fur to live, and jest natcherally
floated away. The nurse had thought Miss Lucy asleep, but as both her
and Colonel Tom turn quick toward her bed they see that she has heard
and seen, and she turns her face toward the wall. Which he tries fur to
comfort her, Colonel Tom does, telling her as how it is an illegitimate
child, and fur its own sake it was better it was dead before it ever
lived any. Which she don't answer of him back, but only stares in
a wild-eyed way at him, and lays there and looks desperate, and says
nothing.

In his heart Colonel Tom is awful glad that it is dead. He can't help
feeling that way. And he quits trying to talk to his sister, fur he
suspicions that she will ketch onto the fact that he is glad that it is
dead. He goes on into the next room.

He finds the nurse looking awful funny, and bending over the dead kid.
She is putting a looking-glass to its lips. He asts her why.

She says she thought she might be mistaken after all. She couldn't
say jest WHEN it died. It was alive and feeble, and then purty soon it
showed no signs of life. It was like it hadn't had enough strength to
stay and had jest went. I didn't show any pulse, and it didn't appear
to be breathing. And she had watched it and done everything before she
beckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that it was dead. But as she come
back into the room where it was she thought she noticed something that
was too light to be called a real flutter move its eyelids, which she
had closed down over its eyes. It was the ghost of a move, like it had
tried to raise the lids, or they had tried to raise theirselves, and had
been too weak. So she has got busy and wrapped a hot cloth around it,
and got a drop of brandy or two between its lips, and was fighting to
bring it back to life. And thought she was doing it. Thought she had
felt a little flutter in its chest, and was trying if it had breath at
all.

Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner fambly has always been
at home. And how high they had always held their heads. And how none of
the women has ever been like this before. Nor no disgrace of any kind.
And that there kid, if it is alive, is a sign of disgrace. And he hoped
to God, he said, it wasn't alive.

But he don't say so. He stands there and watches that nurse