“Nothing in the world,” I cried, “but I was not very hungry, and, in fact, I do want to get back to my coffee.”
“Well,” she answered, “I must say you eat fairer than ever Sally did, for, I give you my word, for years on end that parrot cheated me out of at least half a cracker every day of her life, and yet, my dear, when she died she was as thin as I am.”
When I was about leaving her, she said to me: “You, girl, I like you! You are queer. You are uneven, and you make me guess. You know more and you know less than most girls of your age, and, thank God, you don’t giggle! You may come again.” She paused and looked at me with a deprecating expression, and finished almost meekly: “That is, if you care to share your spare time with me.”
I told her, and I told her truly, how glad I should be to come. How glad I was to live in Lake street too, and so near to her, and then, rather shyly, I added: “I think, if you will let me, I will tell you my name, Mrs. Worden”--and I mentioned it.
She was looking out at the dreary lake again, and, without withdrawing her eyes, she made answer: “H’m’m! Clara, eh? Cla--ra, Claire--Clarice--that’s a fool name, Clarice? but Clara--that’s light, illustrious, clear, bright! My dear, I’m glad you are named Clara. It’s a good name. I hope it may fit you as well as mine has fitted me. My French mother meant to call me Marie, which is, you know, a form of Mary--‘Star of the Sea,’ and he who did the sprinkling and the crossing and the rest was deaf, and he named me Myra--‘she who weeps.’ Good God! Good God! Have I not been well named? ‘She who weeps.’ The tears are all gone from the eyes, now, and they are dry enough, but hot, my dearies--so very hot! Internal, cruel tears that ooze slowly, like drops of thin, old blood, still fall from my heart, my dearies, while I wait and wait. Aye, it was before the altar, and with the sign of the sacred cross, and the touch of the holy-water on my brow, that he baptized me ‘Myra’--‘she who weeps!’”
I stole out of the room, where well-bred hunger showed its teeth so plainly, and softly closed the door, leaving her in the gathering darkness, a ghost talking to other ghosts, from whom she was separated by the thinnest, frailest shell of mortality I ever saw.