Anything Once - Isabel Ostrander (reading tree TXT) 📗

had been set in a straight line far too mature for her evident youth.

“No grown men ’round these parts wears short pants, an’, anyhow, I knew you were different from the way you talk; somethin’ like the welfare workers, with the hell an’ brimstone left out,” the girl replied soberly. “I’m goin’ to talk like you some day.”

It was the first remark she had made voluntarily concerning herself, and he was quick to seize his advantage.

“Who are you, young lady? You’ve been awfully kind to me, and I don’t know to whom my gratitude is due.”

“Not to anybody.” She turned her head away slightly, but not before he saw a flush mount beneath the superficial coating of freckles, and marveled at the whiteness of her skin. Hers was not the leathery tan of the typical farmer’s daughter, inured to all 12weathers, yet her hands, although small, were toil-worn, and there was an odd incongruity between her dark eyes and the pale, flaxen hue of that ridiculous wisp of a braid.

“I didn’t do any more for you than I’d do for a dog if I found him lyin’ there.”

Her naïve sincerity robbed the statement of its uncomplimentary suggestion, and the young man chuckled, but persisted.

“What is your name? Mine is James–er–Botts.”

“Lou Lacey. It was ’L’ day, you know, an’ there was a teeny bit of lace on my dress. I ain’t ever had any since.”

She added the last with unconscious pathos in her tones, but in his increasing interest and mystification the man who called himself “Botts” was unaware of it. What on earth could she mean about L day, and if she were running away why did she appear so serenely unconcerned about the future as her manner indicated?

He felt that he must draw her out, and he seemed to have hit upon the right method by giving confidence for confidence; but just how 13much could he tell her about himself? James Botts’s own face reddened.

“I’m walking to my home in New York,” he explained. “But I’m late; I ought to make it by a certain date, and I don’t think I’ll be able to, since my encounter with Terwilliger’s bull. Where do you live? I mean, where are you going? Where is your home?”

“Nowheres,” Lou Lacey replied offhandedly, following with her eyes the graceful swoop of a dragonfly over the tumbling waters of the little stream.

“Great Scott!” The astounded young man sat up suddenly, with his hand to his head. “Why, everybody has a home, you know!”

“Not everybody,” the girl dissented quietly.

“But–but surely you haven’t been walking the roads?”

There was genuine horror in his tones. “Where did you come from this morning when you found me?”

“From Hess’s farm, back up the road a piece,” she replied with her usual unemotional literalness. “I been there a week, but 14I didn’t like it, so I came away. The welfare workers got me that place when my time was up.”

Her time! Good Heavens, could this little country girl with her artless manner and candid eyes be an ex-convict? Surely she was too young, too simple. Yet the gates of hideous reformatories had clanged shut behind younger and more innocent-appearing delinquents than she.

His eyes wandered over her thin, childish figure as she sat there beside him, still intent upon the movements of the glittering dragonfly, and he shuddered. Those horrible, shapeless shoes might very well have been prison-made, and the striped dress was exactly like those he had seen in some pictures of female convicts. Her freckles, too, might have been the result of only a few days’ exposure to the sun, and he had already observed the whiteness of the skin beneath; that whiteness which resembled the prison pallor.

Could it be that her very gawkiness and frank simplicity were the result not of bucolic nature, but of dissimulation? Every instinct 15within the man cried out against the thought, but a devil of doubt and uncertainty drove him on.

“I thought that didn’t look like the dress of a farmer’s daughter!” He essayed to laugh, but it seemed to him that there was a grating falsetto in his tones. “You haven’t worked in the garden much, either, have you?”

“Garden!” Lou sniffed. “They promised the welfare workers that they’d give me outdoor chores to build me up, but when I got there I found I had to cook for eighteen farm-hands, as well as the family, an’ wait on them, an’ clean up an’ all. Said they’d pay me twelve dollars a month, an’ I could take the first month’s money out by the week in clothes, an’ for the first week all they gave me was this sunbonnet an’ apron. I left them the other dress an’ things I had, an’ I figgered the rest of the money they owed me would just about pay for this ham an’ bread an’ the knife an’ soap. The comb was mine.”

She added the last in a tone of proud possession, and James Botts asked very soberly:

“The welfare workers found this position 16for you, Lou Lacey? But where did they find you?”

“Why, at the institootion,” she responded, as though surprised that he had not already guessed. “I ain’t ever been anywhere else; I’ve always been a orphin.”

17CHAPTER II
Partners

For a moment James Botts turned his head away lest she see the deep red flood of shame which had suffused his face. Poor little skinny, homely, orphan kid, thrown out to buck the world for herself, and stopping in her first flight from injustice to help a stranger, only to have him think her a possible criminal! He was glad that his back twinged and his head throbbed; he ought to be kicked out into the ditch and left to die there for harboring such thoughts.

He was a cur, and she–hang it! There was something appealing about her in spite of her looks. Perhaps it was the sturdy self-reliance, which in itself betrayed her utter innocence and ignorance of the world, that made a fellow want to protect her.

In his own circle James Botts had never 18been known as a Sir Galahad, but he had been away from his own circle for exactly nineteen eventful days now, and in that space of time he had learned much. His heart went out in sympathy as he turned once more to her.

But at the moment Lou Lacey seemed in no momentary need of sympathetic understanding. She was pursuing a hapless frog with well-directed shots of small pebbles, and there was an impish grin upon her face.

“How old are you?” he asked suddenly.

Lou shrugged.

“I don’t know. About seventeen or eighteen, I reckon; at least, they told me six years ago that I was twelve, an’ I’ve kept track ever since. When I was sixteen, though, and it was time for me to be got a place somewhere, the matron put me back a couple of years; we were gettin’ more babies from the poor-farm than usual, an’ I was kinder handy with them. She had to let me go now because one of the visitin’ deaconesses let out that she’d seen me there sixteen years ago herself, an’ I was toddlin’ round then. Oh, I missed him!”

The frog, with a triumphant plop, had disappeared 19beneath a flat, submerged stone, and Lou turned to note her companion’s pain-drawn face.

“I’m goin’ to fix that bandage on your head again,” she declared as she sprang to her feet. “Is your back hurtin’ you very much?”

“Not very.” He forced a smile, but his face was grave, for, despite his suffering, the problem which this accidental meeting had forced upon him filled his thoughts. What was he to do with this girl? In spite of the statement that she had “kept track” of her last few years he could not credit the fact that she was approximately eighteen; fourteen would be nearer the guess he would have made, and it was unthinkable that a child like that should wander about the country alone.

He could not bear the thought of betraying her innocent confidences by handing her over to the nearest authorities; it would mean her being held as a vagrant and possibly sent to the county poor-farm. Perhaps the people with whom she had been placed were not so bad, after all; if he took her back and reasoned with them, insisted upon their keeping to 20their bargain, and giving her lighter tasks to perform.

Then he remembered his own appearance, and smiled ruefully. Instead of listening they would in all probability set the dog on him. Perhaps he could persuade her to return of her own accord.

“The people you were working for; their name was ‘Hess’?” he asked.

She nodded as she finished fastening the cool compress about his forehead.

“Henry Hess an’ his wife, Freida, an’–an’ Max.”

Something in the quality of her tone more than her hesitation made him demand sharply:

“Who is Max?”

“Their son.” Her voice was very low, but for the first time it trembled slightly.

“You don’t like him, do you?” He waited a moment, and then added abruptly: “Why not?”

“Because he’s a–a beast! I don’t want to talk about him! I don’t want even to remember that such things as he is can be let live!”

21James Botts turned and looked at her and then away, for the childish figure had been drawn up tensely with a sort of instinctive dignity which sat not ill upon it, and from her dark eyes insulted womanhood had blazed.

“I’d like to go back and lick him to a standstill!” to his own utter amazement Botts heard his own voice saying thickly.

The fire had died out of Lou’s face and she replied composedly:

“What for? He don’t matter any more, does he? We’re goin’ on.”

The last sentence recalled his problem once more to his mind. What in the world was he to do with this young creature whom fate had thrust upon his hands? Four quarters and a fifty-cent piece represented his entire capital at the moment, and if he did put her into the hands of the county authorities until his journey was completed and he could make other arrangements for her, it would mean a delay on his part now, when every hour counted for so much just now.

22“Do you know how far we are from Hudsondale?” he asked.

“Not more’n two miles, the farm-hands used to walk there often of an evenin’ to the movies.”

The girl had cleaned her knife in the brook and was now wrapping it in the apron, together with the remains of their repast.

“They say that not more’n twenty miles from there you can see the big river, but I ain’t ever been.”

“That’s the way I was going,” he observed thoughtlessly. “From Hudsondale to Highvale, and right on down the west bank of the river to New York.”

Lou sat back on her heels reflectively.

“All right,” she said at last. “I ain’t ever figgered on goin’s far as New York, but I might as well go there as anywhere, and I guess I kin keep up with you now your back’s kinder sprained. We’ll go along together.”

James Botts gulped.

“Certainly not!” he retorted severely, when he could articulate. “It’s utterly out of the question! You’re not a little child any longer, 23and I’m not old enough to pose as your father. You must think what people would say!”

“Why must I?” Her clear eyes shamed him. “What’s it matter? I guess two kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an’ if I have been in a brick house with a high fence an’ a playground between where never a blade of grass grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take care of myself a lot better ’n you kin!”

“But you don’t understand!” he groaned. “There are certain conditions that I can’t very