So she either was not there or was not able to work--my instinct told me that; and I ran to the foot of the stairs, and calling as I had so often done when a child, "Ma, Ma! Where are you, ma!" I waited to hear her answer.
Rucker, pale as a sheet, came up to me, his quivering mouth trying to work itself into a sneaking sort of smile.
"Why, Jacob, Jakey," he drooled, "is this you?
I didn't know you.

Sit down, my son, and I'll tell you the sad, sad news!" I heard him, but I did not trust nor understand him, and I went through that house from cellar to garret, looking for her; my heart freezing within me as I saw how impossible it would be for her to live so.

There were two bedrooms, both beds lying just as they had been left in the morning--and my mother always opened her beds up for an airing when she rose, and made them up right after breakfast.
The room occupied by the young woman was the room of a slut; the clothes she had taken off the night before, or even before that, lay in a ring about the place where her feet had been when she dropped them in the dust and lint which rolled about in the corners like feathers.

Her corset was thrown down in a corner; shoes and stockings littered the floor; her comb was clogged with red hair like a wire fence with dead grass after a freshet; dingy, grimy underclothing lay about.

I peered into a closet, in which there were more garments on the floor than on the nails.