[2]

It was before the lean-to was built. Kate had collected the money Charles had left. The check was converted to large bills, and the bills in their bales were in the safe-deposit box at the Monterey County Bank.

It was about the time the first pains began to twist her hands. There was enough money now to go away. It was just a matter of getting the most she could out of the house. But also it was better to wait until she felt quite well again.

She never felt quite well again. New York seemed cold and very far away.

A letter came to her signed “Ethel.” Who in hell was Ethel? Whoever she was, she must be crazy to ask for money. Ethel—there were hundreds of Ethels. Ethels grew on every bush. And this one scrawled illegibly on a lined pad.

Not very long afterward Ethel came to see Kate, and Kate hardly recognized her.

Kate sat at her desk, watchful, suspicious, and confident. “It’s been a long time,” she said.

Ethel responded like a soldier who comes in his cushion age upon the sergeant who trained him. “I’ve been poorly,” she said. Her flesh had thickened and grown heavy all over her. Her clothes had the strained cleanliness that means poverty.

“Where are you—staying now?” Kate asked, and she wondered how soon the old bag would be able to come to the point.

“Southern Pacific Hotel. I got a room.”

“Oh, then you don’t work in a house now?”

“I couldn’t never get started again,” said Ethel. “You shouldn’t of run me off.” She wiped big tears from the corners of her eyes with the tip of a cotton glove. “Things are bad,” she said. “First I had trouble when we got that new judge. Ninety days, and I didn’t have no record—not here anyways. I come out of that and I got the old Joe. I didn’t know I had it. Give it to a regular—nice fella, worked on the section gang. He got sore an’ busted me up, hurt my nose, lost four teeth, an’ that new judge he give me a hundred and eighty. Hell, Kate, you lose all your contacts in a hundred and eighty days. They forget you’re alive. I just never could get started.”

Kate nodded her head in cold and shallow sympathy. She knew that Ethel was working up to the bite. Just before it came Kate made a move. She opened her desk drawer and took out some money and held it out to Ethel. “I never let a friend down,” she said. “Why don’t you go to a new town, start fresh? It might change your luck.”

Ethel tried to keep her fingers from grabbing at the money. She fanned the bills like a poker hand—four tens. Her mouth began to work with emotion.

Ethel said, “I kind of hoped you’d see your way to let me take more than forty bucks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?”