The Little Friend полностью

“I don’t see why not. When you’re taking the hot chocolate. For yourself.”

“You know how early Addie does get up, Edith,” interjected Libby, anxiously, “and she’s afraid that the room service won’t open until seven or eight—”

“That’s why I packed this good hot chocolate! A cup of hot chocolate won’t hurt Adelaide one bit.”

“I don’t mind what I have, hot chocolate sounds awfully good! Just think,” said Libby, clapping her hands and turning to Harriet. “This time next week we’ll be in South Carolina! I’m so excited!”

“Yes,” Tat said brightly. “And your grandmother’s mighty smart to drive us all there.”

“I don’t know about smart, but I expect I can get all of us there and back in one piece.”

“Libby, Ida Rhew quit,” said Harriet in a miserable rush, “she’s leaving town—”

“Quit?” asked Libby, who was hard of hearing; she glanced imploringly at Edith, who tended to speak more loudly and distinctly than most people. “I’m afraid you’ll have to slow down a little, Harriet.”

“She’s talking about Ida Rhew that works for them,” said Edie, folding her arms over her chest. “She’s leaving, and Harriet is upset about it. I’ve told her that things change, and that people move on, and that’s just the way the world is.”

Libby’s face fell. With candid sympathy, she gazed at Harriet.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Tat. “You’ll miss Ida, I know you will, sweetheart, she’s been with you a long time.”

“Ah,” said Libby, “but this child loves Ida! You love Ida, don’t you darling,” she said to Harriet, “the way that I love Odean.”

Tat and Edie rolled their eyes at each other, and Edie said: “You love Odean a little too much, Lib.” Odean’s laziness was an old, old joke among Libby’s sisters; she sat around the house, supposedly in ill-health, while Libby brought her cold drinks and did the washing-up.

“But Odean’s been with me for fifty years,” said Libby. “She’s my family. She was with me out at Tribulation, for Heaven’s sake, and she’s not in good health.”

Tat said: “She takes advantage of you, Libby.”

“Darling,” said Libby, who had grown quite pink in the face, “I mean to tell you that Odean carried me out of the house when I was so sick with pneumonia that time out in the country. Carried me! On her back! All the way from Tribulation over to Chippokes!”

Edie said, thinly: “Well, she certainly doesn’t do much now.”

Quietly, Libby turned to Harriet for a long moment, and her watery old eyes were steady and compassionate.

“It’s awful being a child,” she said, simply, “at the mercy of other people.”

“Just wait until you’re grown up,” Tatty said encouragingly, putting an arm around Harriet’s shoulder. “Then you’ll have your own house, and Ida Rhew can come live with you. How about that?”

“Nonsense,” said Edie. “She’ll get over it soon enough. Maids come, and maids go—”

“I’ll never get over it!” shrieked Harriet, startling them all.

Before any of them could say anything, she threw off Tatty’s arm and turned and ran off. Edie lifted her eyebrows, resignedly, as if to say: this is what I have put up with all morning.

“My goodness!” said Tat, at last, passing a hand over her forehead.

“To tell you the truth,” Edie said, “I think Charlotte’s making a mistake, but I’m tired of putting my foot in over there.”

“You’ve always done everything for Charlotte, Edith.”

“So I have. And it’s why she doesn’t know how to do anything for herself. I think it’s high time she started taking more responsibility.”

“But what about the girls?” said Libby. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”

“Libby, you had Tribulation to run and Daddy and the rest of us to look after when you were hardly older than she is,” said Edie, nodding in the direction in which Harriet had disappeared.

“That’s so. But these children aren’t like we were, Edith. They’re more sensitive.”

“Well, it didn’t matter if we were sensitive. We didn’t have any choice.”

“What’s wrong with that child?” said Adelaide—powdered and lipsticked, her hair freshly curled—as she started up the porch. “I met her running down the street like a thunderbolt, dirty as anything. And she wouldn’t even speak to me.”

“Let’s all go inside,” said Edie; for the morning was getting hot. “I have a pot of coffee on. For those who can drink it, that is.”

“My,” said Adelaide, stopping to admire a bank of rosy pink lilies, “these are certainly going great guns!”

“Those zephyr lilies? I brought those from out on the place. Dug them up in the dead of winter and put them in pots, and only one came up the next summer.”

“Look at them now!” Adelaide leaned down.

“Mother used to call them,” said Libby, peering over the porch railing, “Mother used to call those her pink rain lilies.”

“Zephyr is their real name.”

“Pink rain is what Mother called them. We had these at her funeral, and tuberose. It was so hot when she died—”

“I’m going to have to go on in,” said Edie, “I’m about to have the heat stroke, I’ll be inside having a cup of coffee whenever yall are ready.”