The Progress of Love

street and they recognized me. Tell them that. Tell them not to go to the police or say anything about it, because my life is at stake.”
    “How did you know there was a body in the sack?” said Sam idiotically. “Don’t talk anymore about it. I have to think.”
    But all the way back to Kernaghan’s Edgar did nothing but talk, elaborating on this story or on another, which involved his having been recruited by the government to be a spy, having to dye his hair black and change his name.
    They got to the boarding house just as Alice Peel and her fiance, the policeman, were coming out the front door.
    “Go round the back,” said Edgar.
    The kitchen door was wide open. Callie had been cleaning the stovepipes. Now she had them all in place again, and was cleaning the stove. She was polishing the black part of it with waxed bread papers and the trim with a clean rag. The stove was a wonderful sight, like black marble set with silver, but Callie herself was smudged from head to foot. Even her eyelids were black. She was singing “My Darling Nellie Grey,” and she made it go very fast, to help with the polishing.
“Oh, my darling Nellie Grey ,
They have taken you away ,
And I’ll never see my darling anymore.”
    Miss Kernaghan sat at the table, drinking a cup of hot water. Besides her rheumatism, she was troubled with indigestion. Creaks came from her joints, and powerful rumbles, groans, and even whistles, from her deep insides. Her face took no notice.
    “You boys,” she said. “What have you been doing?”
    “Walking,” said Edgar.
    “You aren’t doing your stunts anymore.”
    Sam said, “The ground’s too wet.”
    “Sit down,” said Miss Kernaghan.
    Sam could hear Edgar’s shaky breathing. His own stomach felt very heavy, as if all work on the mass of doughnuts—he had eaten all but one of them—had ceased. Could Callie have told? She didn’t look up at them.
    “I never told you boys how Callie was born,” Miss Kernaghan said. And she started right in to tell them.
    “It was in the Queen’s Hotel in Stratford. I was staying there with my friend Louie Green. Louie Green and I ran a millinery shop. We were on our way to Toronto to get our spring trim. But it was winter. In fact, it was a blizzard blowing. We were the only ones for supper. We were coming out of the dining room afterwards and the hotel door blew open and in came three people. It was the driver that worked for the hotel, that met the trains, and a woman and a man. The man and the driver were hanging on to the woman and hauling her between them. She was howling and yelling and she was puffed up to a terrible size. They got her on the settee, but she slid off it onto the floor. She was only a girl, eighteen or nineteen years old. The baby popped right out of her on the floor. The man just sat down on the settee and put his head between his legs. I was the one had to run and call for the hotelkeeper and his wife. They came running and their dog running ahead of them, barking. Louie was hanging on to the banisters afraid she might faint. Everything happening at once.
    “The driver was French-Canadian, so he had probably seen a baby born before. He bit the cord with his teeth and tied it up with some dirty string out of his pocket. He grabbed a rug and stuffed it up between her legs. Blood was coming out of her as dark as fly poison—it was spreading across the floor. He yelled for somebody to get snow, and the husband, or whatever he was, he never even lifted his head. It was Louie ran out and got her hands full, and when the driver saw what a piddling little bit she brought he just swore at her and threw it down. Then he kicked the dog, because it was getting too interested. He kicked it so hard it landed across the room and the hotel woman was screaming it was killed. I picked the baby up and wrapped it in my jacket. That was Callie. What a sickly-looking thing. The dog wasn’t killed at all. The rugs were soaked with blood and the Frenchman swearing a blue streak. She was dead but she was still bleeding.
    “Louie was the one wanted us to take her. The husband said he would get in touch but he never did. We had to get a bottle and boil up milk and corn syrup and make her a bed in a drawer. Louie let on to be very fond of her, but within a year Louie gotmarried and went to live in Regina and has never been back. So much for fond.”
    Sam thought that this was all most probably a lie. Nevertheless it had a terrible effect on