Part 64 (1/2)
”What's in that locket?”
She laughed as she caught it in her fingers.
”My luck!”
”I understand that. It brought me luck, too, but there's something else. Won't you tell me?”
She unclasped the trinket and held it in her hand, turning it over slowly. Then she sprung the catch and held it so he could see.
Behind the disc of mica lay a piece of oat straw.
”That is the last straw,” she said simply.
He did not understand.
”The one you would not draw that day, which seems so long ago!”
His face brightened.
”You kept it?”
”I clung to it as though it were ... the last straw!
”Why, Tom, can't you see what it has meant? If you had drawn you would have been my foreman. You would have protected me, fought for me, taken care of me. I'd never have been forced to stand alone, never been forced to try to do something for myself, by myself. Your refusal put on me the responsibility of being a woman or a leech....