She gave him a hot bath and put a new piece of fat meat on his festering heel. Then she told him to climb into Annjee’s bed and go to sleep, but instead he lay for a long time looking out the window that was beside the bed. He thought about the carnival—the Ferris wheel sweeping up into the air, and the minstrel show. Then he remembered Benbow’s dance a few weeks ago and how his Aunt Harriett had stood sullenly the next morning while Hager whipped her—and hadn’t cried at all, until the welts came under her silk stockings.... Then he wondered what Jimmy Lane would do if his sick mother died from the T. B. and he were left with nobody to take care of him, because Jimmy’s step-father was no good.... Eu-uuu! His heel hurt! . . . When school began again, he would be in the fifth grade, but he wished he’d hurry up and get to high school, like Harriett was.... When he got to be a man, he was going to be a railroad engineer.... Gee, he wasn’t sleepy—and his heel throbbed painfully.

In the next room Harriett had lighted the oil-lamp and was moving swiftly about taking clothes from the dresser-drawers and spreading them on the bed. She thought Sandy was asleep, he knew—but he couldn’t go to sleep the way his foot hurt him. He could see her through the doorway folding her dresses in little piles and he wondered why she was doing that. Then she took an old suit-case from the closet and began to pack it, and when it was full, she pulled a new bag from under the bed, and into it she dumped her toilet-articles, powder, vaseline, nail-polish, straightening comb, and several pairs of old stockings rolled in balls. Then she sat down on the bed between the two closed suit-cases for a long time with her hands in her lap and her eyes staring ahead of her.

Finally she rose and closed the bureau-drawers, tidied up the confusion she had created, and gathered together the discarded things she had thrown on the floor. Then Sandy heard her go out into the back yard towards the trash-pile. When she returned, she put on a tight little hat and went into the kitchen to wash her hands, throwing the water through the back door. Then she tiptoed into the room where Sandy was lying and kissed him gently on the head. Sandy knew that she thought he was asleep, but in spite of himself he suddenly threw his arms tightly around her neck. He couldn’t help it.

“Where you going, Aunt Harriett?” he said, sitting up in bed, clutching the girl.

“Honey, you won’t tell on me, will you?” Harriett asked.

“No,” he answered, and she knew he wouldn’t. “But where are you going, Aunt Harrie?”

“You won’t be afraid to stay here until grandma comes?”

“No,” burying his face on her breast. “I won’t be afraid.”

“And you won’t forget Aunt Harrie?”