They drank until it ast midnight, and the moon was clouded over so that the night was cold and dark. The hunchback still sat otom steps, bent over miserably with his forehead resting on his knee. Miss Amelia stood with her hands in her pockets, one foot resting on the sed step of the stairs. She had been silent for a long time. Her face had the expression often seen in slightly cross-eyed persons who are thinking deeply, a look that appears to be both very wise and very crazy. At last she said: "I dont know your name."
"Im Lymon Willis," said the hunchback.
"Well, e on in," she said. "Some supper was left iove and you eat."
Only a few times in her life had Miss Amelia invited ao eat with her, unless she were planning to trick them in some way, or make money out of them. So the men on the porch felt there was something wrong. Later, they said among themselves that she must have been drinking ba the s the better part of the afternoon. At any rate she left the porch, and Stumpy MacPhail and the twi on off home. She bolted the front door and looked all around to see that her goods were in order. Then she went to the kit, which was at the back of the store. The hunchback followed her, dragging his suitcase, sniffing and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his dirty coat.
"Sit down," said Miss Amelia. "Ill just warm up whats here."
It was a good meal they had together on that night. Miss Amelia was rid she did ne herself food. There was fried chi (the breast of which the hunchback took on his own plate), mashed rootabeggars, creens, and hot, pale golden, sweet potatoes. Miss Amelia ate slowly and with the relish of a farm hand. She sat with both elbows oable, bent over the plate, her knees spread wide apart and her feet braced on the rungs of the chair. As for the hunchback, he gulped down his supper as though he had not smelled food in months. During the meal oear crept down his dingy cheek -- but it was just a little leftover tear a nothing at all. The lamp oable was well-trimmed, burning blue at the edges of the wick, and casting a cheerful light i. When Miss Amelia had eaten her supper she wiped her plate carefully with a slice of light bread, and then poured her own clear, sweet syrup over the bread. The hunchback did likewise -- except that he was more finicky and asked for a new plate. Having finished, Miss Amelia tilted back her chair, tightened her fist, ahe hard, supple muscles of her right arm beh the , blue cloth of her shirtsleeves -- an unscious habit with her, at the close of a meal. Theook the lamp from the table and jerked her head toward the staircase as an invitation for the hunchback to follow after her.
Above the store there were the three rooms where Miss Amelia had lived during all her life -- two bedrooms with a large parlor iween. Few people had evehese rooms, but it was generally known that they were well-furnished aremely . And now Miss Amelia was taking up with her a dirty little hunchbacked stranger, e from God knows where. Miss Amelia walked slowly, two steps at a time, holding the lamp high. The hunchback hovered so close behihat the swinging light made oaircase wall one great, twisted shadow of the two of them. Soon the premises above the store were dark as the rest of the town.
The m was serene, with a sunrise of urple mixed with rose. In the fields around the town the furrows were newly plowed, and very early the tenants were at work setting out the young, deep gre