respectful click.

Lizzie Pierce and Harriett sat in the taxicab, holding each other's hands.
Harriett spoke.

"He says I've got what Mamma had."

Lizzie blinked away her tears; her hand loosened and tightened on
Harriett's with a nervous clutch.

Harriett felt nothing but a strange, solemn excitement and exaltation. She
was raised to her mother's eminence in pain. With every stab she would
live again in her mother. She had what her mother had.

Only she would have an operation. This different thing was what she
dreaded, the thing her mother hadn't had, and the going away into the
hospital, to live exposed in the free ward among other people. That was
what she minded most. That and leaving her house, and Maggie's leaving.

She cried when she saw Maggie standing at the gate in her white apron as
the taxicab took her away. She thought, "When I come back again she won't
be there." Yet somehow she felt that it wouldn't happen; it was impossible
that she should come back and not find Maggie there.


She lay in her white bed in the white-curtained cubicle. Lizzie was paying
for the cubicle. Kind Lizzie. Kind. Kind.

She wasn't afraid of the operation. It would happen in the morning. Only
one thing worried her. Something Connie had told her. Under the anaesthetic