One day she asked about Glahn--asked very cautiously. Was he not well? Had he gone away?
“If he's not dead, or gone away,” I said, “he's lying at home, no doubt. It's all one to me. He's beyond all bearing now.”
But just then, coming up to the hut, we saw Glahn lying on a mat on the ground, hands at the back of his neck, staring up at the sky.
Maggie went straight up to him, before I could stop her, and said in a pleased sort of voice:
“I don't chew things now--nothing at all. No feathers or money or bits of paper--you can see for yourself.”
Glahn scarcely looked at her. He lay still. Maggie and I went on. When I reproached her with having broken her promise and spoken to Glahn again, she answered that she had only meant to show him he was wrong.
“That's right--show him he's wrong,” I said. “But do you mean it was for his sake you stopped chewing things?”
She didn't answer. What, wouldn't she answer?
“Do you hear? Tell me, was it for his sake?”
And I could not think otherwise. Why should she do anything for Glahn's sake?
That evening Maggie promised to come to me, and she did.
She came at ten o'clock. I heard her voice outside; she was talking loud to a child whom she led by the hand. Why did she not come in, and what had she brought the child for? I watched her, and it struck me that she was giving a signal by talking out loud to the child; I noticed, too, that she kept her eyes fixed on the attic--on Glahn's window up there. Had he nodded to her, I wondered, or beckoned to her from inside when he heard her talking outside? Anyhow, I had sense enough myself to know there was no need to look up aloft when talking to a child on the ground.
I was going out to take her by the arm. But just then she let go the child's hand, left the child standing there, and came in herself, through the door to the hut. She stepped into the passage. Well, there she was at last; I would take care to give her a good talking to when she came!
Well, I stood there and heard Maggie step into the passage. There was no mistake: she was close outside my door. But instead of coming in to me, I heard her step up the ladder--up to the attic--to Glahn's hole up there. I heard it only too well. I threw my door open wide, but Maggie had gone up already. That was ten o'clock.