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" You kill everybody that is fool enough to care anythin’ about you... "
What is our obligation to love they neighbor? In this short story by Mary Wilkins Freeman (best known for Pembroke), readers are invited to question their own ideas of when help becomes hinderance. Rae Wilson shares her observations on Freeman's words and invites you to question your own selflessness.
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Monster Heat - by David Fesliyan
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★In the oral tradition of storytelling, Echoes in the Dark, delivers classic works of gothic fiction weekly. Hosted and curated by Ms. Rae (an award-winning educator, actor, and literary analyst) the collection of stories spans popular works by authors like Edgar Allan Poe as well as lesser known works by authors such as Guy de Maupassant. Each story is followed by a literary analysis.
If you’re looking to enjoy more classic literature, struggle to find the time to read, hate reading, or just love listening to stories, then this podcast is for you.
A Note on Content: While these stories are generally appropriate for listeners aged 12 and up, classic Gothic literature frequently explores themes of murder, romantic affairs, and "tortured souls." Stories are performed exactly as written in their original historical context.
If you are looking to learn more ways to boost your literary analysis visit:
Speaker: Welcome to Echoes in the
Dark, a podcast dedicated to the
oral tradition of storytelling.
Speaker: If you're looking to enjoy
more classic literature, struggle to
find the time to read, hate
Speaker: reading, or just love
listening to stories, then this
podcast is for you.
Speaker: At the end of each story,
I'll share my analysis on the
story's deeper meaning.
Speaker: Luella Miller by Mary
Wilkins Freeman is a short story
that was originally published in
Speaker: in Everybody's Magazine.
Speaker: It's told in first-person
narration, but what's really unique
about this story is that the
Speaker: narrator has someone else
tell the main events.
Speaker: So if you've ever listened
to or read any Sherlock Holmes, then
you're familiar that though
Speaker: Holmes is the main
character, everything is told by
Watson.
Speaker: If you want to follow
along, you can get a copy of this
story on my
Speaker: website
BetterEssayWriting.com.
Speaker: Luella Miller by Mary
Wilkins Freeman.
Speaker: Close to the village street
stood the one -story house in which
Luella Miller, who had
Speaker: an evil name in the
village, had dwelt.
Speaker: She had been dead for
years, yet there were those in the
village who, in spite
Speaker: of the clearer light which
comes on a vantage point from a long
past danger, have
Speaker: believed in the tale which
they heard from their childhood.
Speaker: In their hearts, although
they scarcely would have owned it,
was a survival of the wild
Speaker: horror and frenzied fear of
the ancestors who had dwelt in the
same age with Luella
Speaker: Miller.
Speaker: Young people would stare
with a shudder at the old house as
they passed, and children
Speaker: never played around it as
was their want around an untenanted
building.
Speaker: Not a window in the old
Miller house was broken.
Speaker: The panes reflected the
morning sunlight in the patches of
emerald and blue, and the latch
Speaker: of the sagging front door
was never lifted, although no bolt
secured it.
Speaker: Since Luella Miller had
been carried out of it, the house
had had no tenant except
Speaker: one friendless old soul who
had no choice between that and the
far-off shelter of
Speaker: the open sky.
Speaker: This old woman who had
survived her kindred and friends
lived in the house one week.
Speaker: Then one morning, no smoke
came out of the chimney, and a body
of neighbors, a
Speaker: score strong, entered and
found her dead in her bed.
Speaker: There were dark whispers as
to the cause of her death, and there
were those who
Speaker: testified to an expression
of fear so exalted that it showed
forth the state of the
Speaker: departing soul upon the
dead face.
Speaker: The old woman had been hale
and hearty when she entered the
house, and in seven
Speaker: days she was dead.
Speaker: It seemed that she had
fallen a victim to some uncanny
power.
Speaker: The minister talked in the
pulpit with covert severity against
the sin of superstition.
Speaker: Still, the belief
prevailed.
Speaker: Not a soul in the village
but would have chosen the almost
house rather than dwelling.
Speaker: No vagrant, if he had heard
the tale, would seek shelter beneath
that old roof, unhallowed
Speaker: by nearly half a century of
superstitious fear.
Speaker: There was only one person
in the village who had actually
known Luella Miller.
Speaker: That person was a woman
well over eighty, but a marvel of
vitality, an unextinct youth,
Speaker: straight as an arrow with
the spring of one recently let loose
from the bow of
Speaker: life.
Speaker: She moved about the
streets, and she always went to
church, rain or shine.
Speaker: She had never married and
had lived alone for years in a house
across the road
Speaker: from Luella Miller's.
Speaker: This woman who had now the
garrulousness of age, but never in
all her life had
Speaker: she ever held her tongue
for any will save her own, and she
never spared the
Speaker: truth when she essayed to
present it.
Speaker: She it was who bore
testimony to the life, evil though
possibly, wittingly, or designly so,
Speaker: of Luella Miller, and to
her personal appearance.
Speaker: When this old woman spoke,
and she had the gift of description,
although her thoughts were
Speaker: clothed in rude vernacular
of her native village, one could
seem to see Luella Miller as
Speaker: she had really looked.
Speaker: According to this woman,
Lydia Anderson by name, Luella
Miller had been a beauty of a
Speaker: type rather unusual in New
England.
Speaker: She had been a slight,
pliant sort of creature, as ready
with a strong yelding to
Speaker: fate and as breakable as a
willow.
Speaker: She'd had glimmering length
of straight, fair hair, which she
wore softly looped round a long,
Speaker: lovely face.
Speaker: She had blue eyes full of
soft pleading, little slender,
clinging hands, and a wonderful
grace
Speaker: of motion and attitude.
Speaker: Luella Miller used to sit
in a way nobody else could if they
sat up and
Speaker: studied a week of Sundays,
said Lydia Anderson, and it was a
sight to see her
Speaker: walk.
Speaker: If one of them willows over
there on the edge of the brook could
start up
Speaker: and get its roots free of
the ground and move off, it would go
just the
Speaker: way Luella Miller used to.
Speaker: She had a green shot silk
she used to wear too, and a hat with
green
Speaker: ribbon streamers, and a
lace veil blowing across her face
and out sideways, and a green
Speaker: ribbon flying from her
waist.
Speaker: That was what she came out
bride in when she married Erestis
Miller.
Speaker: Her name before she was
married was Hill.
Speaker: There was always a sight of
L's in her name, married or single.
Speaker: Erestis Miller was
good-looking too, better looking
than Luella.
Speaker: Sometimes I used to think
that Luella wasn't so handsome after
all.
Speaker: Erestis just about
worshipped her.
Speaker: I used to know him pretty
well.
Speaker: He lived next door to me,
and we went to school together.
Speaker: Folks used to say he was
waiting on me, but he wasn't.
Speaker: I never thought he was,
except once or twice when he said
things that some girls
Speaker: might have suspected meant
something.
Speaker: That was before Luella came
here to teach the district school.
Speaker: It was funny how she came
to get it, for folks said she hadn't
any education,
Speaker: and that one of the big
girls, Lottie Henderson, used to do
all the teaching for
Speaker: her while she sat back and
did embroidery work on a Cambric
pocket handkerchief.
Speaker: Lottie Henderson was a real
smart girl, a splendid scholar, and
she just set her eyes
Speaker: by Luella as all the girls
did.
Speaker: Lottie would have made a
real smart woman, but she died when
Luella had been here
Speaker: about a year.
Speaker: Just faded away and died.
Speaker: Nobody knew what ailed her.
Speaker: She dragged herself to that
schoolhouse and helped Luella teach
till the very last minute.
Speaker: The committee all knew how
Luella didn't do much of the work
herself, but they winked
Speaker: at it.
Speaker: It wasn't long after Lottie
died that Erestis married her.
Speaker: I always thought he heard
it up because she wasn't fit to
teach.
Speaker: One of the big boys used to
help her after Lottie died, but he
had much
Speaker: government and the school
didn't do very well, and Luella
might have had to give it
Speaker: up, for the committee
couldn't have shut their eyes to
things much longer.
Speaker: The boy that helped her was
a real honest, innocent sort of
fella, and he was
Speaker: a good scholar too.
Speaker: Folks said he overstudied,
and that was the reason he took
crazy the year after Luella
Speaker: married, but I don't know.
Speaker: And I don't know what made
Erestis Miller go into consumption
of the blood the year
Speaker: after he was married.
Speaker: Consumption wasn't in his
family.
Speaker: He just grew weaker and
weaker and went almost bent double
when he tried to wait
Speaker: on Luella.
Speaker: And he spoke feeble, like
an old man.
Speaker: He worked terrible hard
till the last, trying to save up a
little to leave Luella.
Speaker: I seen him out in the worst
storms on a wood sled.
Speaker: He used to cut and sell
wood, and he was hunched up on top
looking more
Speaker: dead than alive.
Speaker: Once, I couldn't stand it,
I went over and helped him pitch
some wood on the
Speaker: cart.
Speaker: I was always strong in my
arms.
Speaker: I wouldn't stop for all he
had told me to, and I guess he was
glad
Speaker: enough for the help.
Speaker: That was only a week before
he died.
Speaker: Fell on the kitchen floor
while he was getting breakfast.
Speaker: He always got the breakfast
and let Luella lay a bed.
Speaker: He did all the sweeping,
and the washing, and the ironing,
and most of the cooking.
Speaker: He couldn't bear to have
Luella lift her finger, and she let
him do for her.
Speaker: She lived like a queen for
all the work she did.
Speaker: She didn't even do her
sewing.
Speaker: She said it made a shoulder
ache to sew, and poor Orestes's
sister Lily used to
Speaker: do all her sewing.
Speaker: She wasn't able to either.
Speaker: She was never strong in her
back, but she did it beautifully.
Speaker: She had to, to suit Luella.
Speaker: She was so dreadful
particular.
Speaker: I never saw anything like
the faggoting and hemstitching that
Lily Miller did for Luella.
Speaker: She made all Luella's
Luella outfit in that green silk
dress after Maria Babbitt cut it.
Speaker: Maria she cut it for
nothing, and she did a lot more
cutting and fitting for
Speaker: nothing for Luella too.
Speaker: Lily Miller went to live
with Luella after Orestes died.
Speaker: She gave up her home,
though she was real attached to it,
and wasn't afraid to
Speaker: stay alone.
Speaker: She rented it, and she went
to live with Luella right away after
the funeral.
Speaker: Then this old woman, Lydia
Anderson, who remembered Luella
Miller, would go on to relate the
Speaker: story of Lily Miller.
Speaker: It seemed that on the
removal of Lily Miller to the house
of her dead brother
Speaker: to live with his widow, the
village people first began to talk.
Speaker: This Lily Miller had been
hardly past her first youth, and a
most robust and blooming
Speaker: woman, rosy-cheeked, with
curls of strong black hair
overshadowing her round, candid
temples, and bright
Speaker: dark eyes.
Speaker: It was not six months after
she had taken up her residence with
her sister-in
Speaker: -law that her rosy color
faded, and her pretty curves became
wan hollows.
Speaker: White shadows began to show
in the black rings of her hair, and
the light died
Speaker: out of her eyes.
Speaker: Her features sharpened, and
there were pathetic lines at her
mouth, which yet were always an
Speaker: expression of utter
sweetness and even happiness.
Speaker: She was devoted to her
sister.
Speaker: There was no doubt that she
loved her with her whole heart, and
was perfectly content
Speaker: in her service.
Speaker: It was her sole anxiety, at
least she should die and leave her
alone.
Speaker: The way Lily Miller used to
talk about Luella was enough to make
you mad and
Speaker: enough to make you cry,
said Lydia Anderson.
Speaker: I've been in there
sometimes toward the last, when she
was too feeble to cook, and
Speaker: carried her some blanc
mange or custard, something I
thought she might relish, and she
thanked
Speaker: me, and when I asked her
how she was, say she felt better
than she did
Speaker: yesterday, and asked me if
I didn't think she looked better.
Speaker: Dreadful, pitiful, and say
poor Luella had an awful time caring
for her and doing the
Speaker: work.
Speaker: She wasn't strong enough to
do anything, when all the time
Luella wasn't lifting her finger,
Speaker: and poor Lily didn't get
any care, except for what the
neighbors gave her, and Luella
Speaker: ate up everything that was
carried in for Lily.
Speaker: I had it real straight that
she did.
Speaker: Luella to just sit, cry,
and do nothing.
Speaker: She did act real fond of
Lily, and she pined away
considerable too.
Speaker: There was those that
thought she'd go into a decline
herself, but after Lily died, her
Speaker: Aunt Abby Mixter came, and
then Luella picked up and grew as
fat and rosy as
Speaker: ever, but poor Aunt Abby
began to droop just the way Lily
had, and I guess
Speaker: somebody wrote to her
married daughter, Mrs. Sam Abbott,
who lived in Barra, for she wrote
Speaker: her mother that she must
leave right away and come and make
her a visit, but
Speaker: Aunt Abby wouldn't go.
Speaker: I can see her now.
Speaker: She was a real good-looking
woman, tall and large, with a big
square face and
Speaker: a high forehead that looked
of itself kind of benevolent and
good.
Speaker: She just tended out on
Luella as if she had been a baby,
and when her
Speaker: married daughter sent for
her, she wouldn't stir one inch.
Speaker: She'd always thought a lot
of her daughter too, but she said
Luella needed her, and
Speaker: her married daughter
didn't.
Speaker: Her daughter kept rotting
and rotting, but it didn't do no
good.
Speaker: Finally, she came, and when
she saw how bad her mother looked,
she broke down and
Speaker: cried all but went on her
knees to have her come away.
Speaker: She spoke her mind out to
Luella too.
Speaker: She told her that she
killed her husband and everybody
that had anything to do with
Speaker: her, and she thanked her to
leave her mother alone.
Speaker: Luella went into hysterics,
and Aunt Abby so frightened that she
called me after her daughter
Speaker: went.
Speaker: Mrs. Sam Abbott, she went
away, fairly crying out loud in the
buggy.
Speaker: Neighbors heard her, and
well, she might, but she never saw
her mother again alive.
Speaker: I went in that night when
Aunt Abby called for me, standing in
the door with
Speaker: her little green checkered
shawl over her head.
Speaker: I could see her now.
Speaker: Do come over here, Miss
Anderson, she sung out, kind of
gasping for breath.
Speaker: I didn't stop for anything.
Speaker: I put over as fast as I
could, and when I got there, there
was Luella
Speaker: laughing and crying all
together, and Aunt Abby trying to
hush her, and all the time
Speaker: she herself was white as a
sheet and shaking so she could
hardly stand.
Speaker: For the land sakes, Miss
Mixter, says I.
Speaker: You look worse than she
does.
Speaker: You ain't fit to be up out
of your bed.
Speaker: Oh, there ain't anything
the matter with me, she says.
Speaker: Then she went on talking to
Luella.
Speaker: There, there, don't, don't,
poor lamb, she says.
Speaker: Aunt Abby's here.
Speaker: She ain't gonna go away and
leave you.
Speaker: Don't, poor lamb.
Speaker: Do leave her with me, Miss
Mixter, and you get back to bed,
says I.
Speaker: For Aunt Abby had been
laying down considerable lately,
though somehow she contrived to do
the
Speaker: work.
Speaker: I'm well enough, says she.
Speaker: Don't you think she had
better have a doctor, Miss Anderson?
Speaker: The doctor, says I.
Speaker: I think you had better have
the doctor.
Speaker: I think you need him much
worse than some folks I could
mention, and I looked
Speaker: right straight at Luella
Miller, laughing and crying and
going on as if she was a
Speaker: sinner of all creation.
Speaker: All the time she was acting
so, seemed as if she was too sick to
sense
Speaker: anything.
Speaker: She was keeping a sharp
lookout to see how we took it all
out of the
Speaker: corner of her eye.
Speaker: I see her.
Speaker: You can never cheat me
about Luella Miller.
Speaker: Finally, I got real mad and
I run home and I got a bottle of
valerian
Speaker: I had and I poured some
boiling hot water on a handful of
catnip and I
Speaker: mixed that catnip tea and
most half a wine glass of valerian
and I went with
Speaker: it over to Luella's.
Speaker: I marched right up to
Luella, holding out the cup, all
smoking.
Speaker: Now, says I, Luella Miller,
you swallow this.
Speaker: What is?
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Oh, what is it?
Speaker: She sort of screeches.
Speaker: Then she goes off laughing
enough to kill.
Speaker: Poor lamb, poor little
lamb, says Aunt Abby, standing over
her all contottery and trying to
Speaker: bathe her head with
camphor.
Speaker: You swallow this right
down, says I, and I didn't waste any
ceremony.
Speaker: I just took hold of Luella
Miller's chin and I tipped her head
back and I
Speaker: caught her mouth open with
laughing and I clapped that cup to
her lips and I
Speaker: fairly hollowed at her.
Speaker: Swallow, swallow, swallow,
and she gulped it right down.
Speaker: She had to and I guess it
did her good.
Speaker: Anyhow, she stopped crying
and laughing and let me put her to
bed and she went
Speaker: to sleep like a baby inside
a half an hour.
Speaker: That's more than I can say
about poor Aunt Abby.
Speaker: She lay awake all that
night and I stayed with her, though
she tried not to
Speaker: have me.
Speaker: She said she wasn't sick
enough for watchers, but I stayed.
Speaker: I made some good cornmeal
gruel and I fed her a teaspoon every
little while all
Speaker: night long.
Speaker: Seemed to me as if she was
just dying from being all wore out.
Speaker: In the morning, as soon as
it was light, I run over to the
Bisbee's and
Speaker: sent Johnny Bisbee for the
doctor.
Speaker: I told him to tell the
doctor to hurry and he come pretty
quick.
Speaker: Poor Aunt Abby didn't seem
to know much anything when he got
there.
Speaker: He couldn't hardly tell she
breathed.
Speaker: She was so used up.
Speaker: When the doctor had gone,
Luella came into the room looking
like a baby in her
Speaker: ruffle nightgown.
Speaker: I can see her now.
Speaker: Her eyes were as blue and
her face all pink and white like a
blossom and
Speaker: she looked at Aunt Abby in
the bed sort of innocent and
surprised.
Speaker: Why, says she.
Speaker: Aunt Abby ain't got up yet?
Speaker: No, she ain't, says I
pretty short.
Speaker: I thought I didn't smell
the coffee, says Luella.
Speaker: Coffee, says I.
Speaker: I guess if you have coffee
this morning you'll make it
yourself.
Speaker: I never made the coffee in
all my life, says she, dreadful and
astonished.
Speaker: Arrestus always made the
coffee as long as he lived and then
Lily, she made it,
Speaker: and then Aunt Abby made it.
Speaker: I don't believe I can make
the coffee, Miss Anderson.
Speaker: You can make it or go
without, just as you please, says I.
Speaker: Ain't Aunt Abby gonna get
up, says she.
Speaker: I guess she won't get up,
says I, sick as she is.
Speaker: I was getting madder and
madder.
Speaker: There was something about
that little pink and white thing
standing there and talking about
coffee
Speaker: when she had killed so many
better folks than she was and had
just killed another.
Speaker: That made me feel most as
if I wish somebody would up and kill
her before
Speaker: she had a chance to do any
more harm.
Speaker: Is Aunt Abby sick, says
Luella, as if she was sort of
aggrieved and injured.
Speaker: Yes, says I, she's sick and
she's gonna die and then you'll be
left all alone
Speaker: and you'll have to do for
yourself and wait on yourself and do
without things.
Speaker: I don't know but I was sort
of hard but it was the truth and if
Speaker: I was any harder than
Luella Miller had been, I'll give
up.
Speaker: I ain't never been sorry
that I said it.
Speaker: Well, Luella, she up and
had hysterics again at that and I
just let her have
Speaker: him.
Speaker: All I did was to bundle her
into the room on the other side of
the
Speaker: entry where Aunt Abby
couldn't hear her if she wasn't past
it.
Speaker: I don't know but she was
and set her down in a chair and told
her
Speaker: not to come back into the
room and she minded.
Speaker: She had her hysterics in
there till she got tired.
Speaker: When she found out that
nobody was coming to call her and do
for her, she
Speaker: stopped.
Speaker: At least, I suppose she
did.
Speaker: I had all I could do with
poor Aunt Abby trying to keep the
breath of
Speaker: life in her.
Speaker: That doctor had told me
that she was dreadful low and give
me some very strong
Speaker: medicine to give her and
drops real often and told me real
particularly about the nourishment.
Speaker: Well, I did as he told me
real faithful till she wasn't able
to swallow any
Speaker: longer.
Speaker: Then, I had a daughter sent
for.
Speaker: I begun to realize that she
wouldn't last any time at all.
Speaker: I hadn't realized it before
though I spoke to Luella the way I
did.
Speaker: The doctor, he came and
Mrs. Sam Abbott but when she got
there, it was too
Speaker: late.
Speaker: Her mother was dead.
Speaker: Aunt Abby's daughter just
get one look at her mother laying
there.
Speaker: Then she turns to the shop
and suddenly looked at me.
Speaker: Where is she?
Speaker: Says she.
Speaker: And I knew what she meant,
Luella.
Speaker: She's out in the kitchen
says I.
Speaker: She's too nervous to see
folks die.
Speaker: She afraid it'll make her
sick.
Speaker: Doctor, he speaks up then.
Speaker: He was a young man.
Speaker: Old Dr. Parker died the
year before and this was a young
fella just out of
Speaker: college.
Speaker: Mrs. Miller is not strong
says he kind of severe and she is
quite right and
Speaker: not aggravating herself.
Speaker: You are another young man.
Speaker: She's got a pretty claw on
you thinks I but I didn't say
anything to him.
Speaker: I just said over to Mrs.
Sam Abbott that Luella was in the
kitchen and Mrs.
Speaker: Sam Abbott she went over
there and I went too and I never
heard anything like
Speaker: the way she talked to
Luella Miller.
Speaker: I felt pretty hard to
Luella myself but this was more than
I ever would have
Speaker: dared to say.
Speaker: Luella, she was too scared
to go into hysterics.
Speaker: She just flopped.
Speaker: She seemed to just shrink
away to nothing in that kitchen
chair with Mrs. Sam Abbott
Speaker: standing over her and
talking and telling her the truth.
Speaker: I guess the truth was most
too much for her and no mistake
because Luella presently
Speaker: actually did faint away and
there wasn't any shame about it.
Speaker: The way I always suspected
there was about them hysterics.
Speaker: She fainted dead away and
we had to lay her flat on the floor
and the
Speaker: doctor he came running down
and he said something about a weak
heart dreadful fish to
Speaker: Mrs. Sam Abbott but she
wasn't a mite scared.
Speaker: She faced him just as well
as even Luella was laying there
looking like death and
Speaker: the doctor filling up her
pulse.
Speaker: Weak heart says she.
Speaker: Weak heart?
Speaker: Weak fiddlesticks?
Speaker: There ain't nothing weak
about that woman.
Speaker: She got the strength enough
to hang on to other folks till she
kills them.
Speaker: Weak?
Speaker: It was my poor mother that
was weak.
Speaker: This woman killed her as
sure as if she had taken a knife to
her.
Speaker: But the doctor he didn't
pay much attention.
Speaker: He was bending over Luella
laying there with her yellow hair
all streaming and her pretty
Speaker: pink and white face all
pale and her blue eyes like stars
gone out and he
Speaker: was holding on to her hand
and smoothing her forehead and
telling me to get the
Speaker: brandy in Aunt Abby's room
and I was sure as I want to be that
Luella
Speaker: had got somebody else to
hang on to.
Speaker: Now Aunt Abby was gone and
I thought of poor Restless Miller
and I sort of
Speaker: pitied the poor young
doctor led away by a pretty face and
I made up my
Speaker: mind I see what I could do.
Speaker: I waited till Aunt Abby had
been dead and buried for about a
month and the
Speaker: doctor was gonna see Luella
steady and folks were beginning to
talk.
Speaker: Then one evening when I
knew the doctor had been called out
of town and wouldn't
Speaker: be around I went over to
Luella's.
Speaker: I found her all dressed up
in a blue muslin with white polka
dots on it
Speaker: and her hair curled just as
pretty and there wasn't a young girl
in the place
Speaker: could compare with her.
Speaker: There was something about
Luella Miller seemed to draw the
heart right out of you.
Speaker: But she didn't draw it out
of me.
Speaker: She was sitting rocking in
the chair by her sitting room window
and Maria Brown had
Speaker: gone home.
Speaker: Maria Brown had been in to
help her or rather to do the work
for Luella
Speaker: wasn't helped when she
didn't do anything.
Speaker: Maria Brown was real
capable and she didn't have any
ties.
Speaker: She wasn't married and
lived alone so she offered.
Speaker: I couldn't see why she
should do the work of any more than
Luella.
Speaker: She wasn't any too strong
but she seemed to think she could
and Luella seemed to
Speaker: think so too.
Speaker: So she went over and did
all the work washed and ironed and
baked while Luella
Speaker: sat and rocked.
Speaker: Hmm Maria didn't live long
afterward.
Speaker: She began to fade away just
the same fashion the others had.
Speaker: Well she was worn but she
acted real mad when folks said
anything.
Speaker: Said Luella was a poor
abused woman too delicate to help
herself and they'd ought to
Speaker: be ashamed and if she died
helping them that couldn't help
themselves she would and she
Speaker: did.
Speaker: I suppose Maria has gone
home says I to Luella when I gone in
and sat
Speaker: down beside her.
Speaker: Yes Maria went half an hour
ago after she had got supper and
washed the dishes
Speaker: said Luella in her pretty
way.
Speaker: I suppose she has got a lot
of work to do in her own house
tonight
Speaker: says I kind of bitter but
that was all thrown away on Luella
Miller.
Speaker: Seemed to her right that
other folks that weren't any better
able than she was herself.
Speaker: She'll wait on her and she
couldn't get it through her head
that anybody should think
Speaker: it wasn't right.
Speaker: Yes says Luella real sweet
and pretty.
Speaker: Yes she said she had to do
her washing tonight.
Speaker: She was let it go for a
fortnight along of coming over here.
Speaker: Why don't she stay home and
do her washing instead of coming
over here and doing
Speaker: your work when you were
just as well able and enough sight
more so than she
Speaker: is to do it says I.
Speaker: Then Luella she looked at
me like a baby who has a rattleshook
at it.
Speaker: She sort of laughed as
innocent as you please.
Speaker: I can't do the work myself
Miss Anderson says she.
Speaker: I never did.
Speaker: Maria has to do it.
Speaker: Then I spoke out.
Speaker: Has to do it says I.
Speaker: Has to do it.
Speaker: She don't have to do it
either.
Speaker: Maria Brown has her own
home and enough to live on.
Speaker: She ain't beholden to you
to come over here and slave for you
and kill herself.
Speaker: Luella she just sat and
stared at me for all the world like
a doll baby
Speaker: that was so abused that it
was coming alive.
Speaker: Yes says I.
Speaker: She's killing herself.
Speaker: She gone to die just the
way Arrestus did and Lily and your
Aunt Abby.
Speaker: You're killing her just as
you did them.
Speaker: I don't know what there is
about you but you seem to bring a
curse says
Speaker: I.
Speaker: You kill everybody that is
fool enough to care anything about
you and do for you.