Anything Once Part 13

"I should say you did save him, young woman! I couldn't have done better for him myself! Now let me have a look at those arms of yours."

After he had bandaged her blisters the woman prepared food and coffee for them all and then took Lou upstairs with her, while Jim dried his soaking clothes by the kitchen fire and the three men talked in a desultory way of the topics of the countryside.

Dr. Blair had just ascertained that Jim and his "sister" were strangers, traveling toward New York, and had offered to drive them both to the trolley line in his little car, when the woman of the house reappeared with Lou, and Jim stared with all his eyes.

Could this be the little scarecrow of a girl he had met on the road only five days before; this unbelievably tall, slender young woman in the dark blue silk gown with filmy ruffles falling about her neck and wrists, and soft puffs of blond hair over her ears?

"It's me, though I kin hardly believe it myself!" Lou answered his unspoken thought. Then drawing him aside she added: "Mis' Tooker--that's her name--gave me a pair of shoes, too, an' a hat an' five whole dollars! Are we goin' to a place called Pelton?"

Jim nodded.

"That is where I hoped we would be by to-night, but it must be at least twelve miles away."

"Well, Mis' Tooker says the trolley goes right into Pelton, and she gave me a letter to a friend of hers there who'll take us in for the night----"

The doctor interrupted with an intimation of another patient to be visited, and they bade farewell to the grateful young couple and started away. The sun was still high, and save for the mud which splashed up with each turn of the wheels, all traces of the storm had vanished.

"Jennie Tooker always was a fool!" Dr. Blair grumbled. "How many babies have you taken care of, young woman?"

"More'n twenty, I guess, off an' on," Lou responded. "I--I used to work in an inst.i.tootion up-State."

Fearing further revelations, Jim hastily took a hand in the conversation, and he and the doctor chatted until the trolley line was reached. There, when they had descended from the little car Lou turned to Jim and asked a trifle shyly:

"You--you're goin' to let me ask you to ride, aren't you? You bought all the food in Riverburgh, you know."

"And you seem to have financed all the rest of the trip," he said with a rueful laugh. "I thought, when you suggested that we should travel together, I would be the one to take care of you, but it has been the other way around. Oh, Lou, I've so much to say to you when we reach our journey's end!"

They arrived at Pelton before dark and found Mrs. Tooker's friend, who ran a small boarding-house for store employees, and was glad to take them in at a dollar a head. Lou disappeared after supper, and although Lou waited long for him on the little porch, he did not return until through sheer fatigue she was forced to go to bed.

In the morning, however, when they met before breakfast in the lower hall he jingled a handful of silver in his pocket.

"However did you git it?" she demanded.

"Garage," he responded succinctly. "Didn't know I was a chauffeur, did you, Lou?"

A peculiar little smile hovered for a moment about her lips, but she merely remarked:

"I thought you wouldn't only take a quarter----"

"For each job," he interrupted her. "A lot of cars came in that needed tinkering with after the storm, and they were short of hands. I made more than two dollars, and we'll ride in state into Hunnikers!"

Lou made no reply, but after breakfast she drew him out on the little porch.

"Jim, I--I'm not goin' on."

"What!" he exclaimed.

"The woman that runs this place, she--she wants a girl to help her, an'

I guess I'll stay." Lou's tones were none too steady, and she did not meet his eyes. "I--I don't believe I'd like New York."

"You, a servant here?" He took one of her hands very gently in his. "I didn't mean to tell you until we were nearly there, and as it is, there is a lot that I can't tell you even now, but this much I want you to know. You're not going to work any more, Lou. You're going to a lovely old lady who lives in a big house all by herself, and there you are going to study and play until you are really grown up, and know as much as anybody."

She smiled and shook her head.

"This is the sort of place for me, Jim. I wasn't meant for anythin'

else, an' if I should live to be a hundred I could never know as much as that lady at the circus who called you 'Jimmie Abbott.'"

"What--" Jim exploded for the second time.

"At least, she said you looked like him, and if she didn't know you were in Canada----"

"Good Lord! What was she doing there?"

"She was with another lady an' two gentlemen, an' I guess they come in an ottermobile," Lou explained. "They was in one the next day, anyway--the one that slammed into the egg-wagon."

She described in detail the two occurrences, and added miserably:

"I didn't mean to tell you, Jim, but as long as I'm not goin' on with you I might as well. It was me that walked on your note-book back there on Mrs. Bemis's porch. It had fallen open on the floor, an' when I picked it up I couldn't help seein' the name that was written across the page. It was your own business, of course, if you didn't want to give your real name to anybody----"

"Listen, Lou." He had caught her other hand now and was holding them both very tightly. "You _are_ going on with me! I can't explain now about my name, but it doesn't matter; nothing matters except that you are not going to be a quitter! You said that you would go on to New York with me, and you're going to keep your word."

"I know better now," she replied quietly. "It's--it's been a wonderful time, but I've got to work an' earn my keep an' try to learn as I go along. It isn't just exactly breakin' my word; I didn't realize----"

"Realize what?" he demanded as she hesitated.

"I thought at first that you were kinder like me; it wasn't until I saw that lady an' found you were a friend of hers, that I knew you were different."

Her eyes were still downcast, and now a tinge of color mounted in her cheeks. "I couldn't bear to have you take me to that other lady in the city and be a-ashamed of me----"

"Ashamed of you!" he repeated, and something in his tone deepened the color in her cheeks into a crimson tide. "Lou, look at me!"

Obediently she raised her eyes for an instant; then lowered them again quickly, and after a pause she said in a very small voice:

"All right, Jim. I--I'll go. I guess I wouldn't just want to be a--a quitter, after all."

It was mid-afternoon when they walked into Hunnikers and although they had come ten long miles with only a stop for a picnic lunch between, they bore no traces of fatigue. Rather they appeared to have been treading on air, and although Jim had scrupulously avoided any further reference to the future, there was a certain buoyant a.s.surance about him which indicated that in his own mind, at least, there remained no room for doubt.

He needed all the a.s.surance he could muster as, after ensconcing Lou at the soda counter in the drug-store, he approached the telephone booth farthest from her ears and closed the door carefully behind him. Lou consumed her soda to its last delectable drop, glanced down anxiously at the worn, but spotless, little silk gown to see if she had spilled any upon it, and then wandered over to the showcase.

Jim's voice came to her indistinguishably once or twice, but it was a full half-hour before he emerged from the booth. He looked wilted but triumphant, and he beamed blissfully as he came toward her, mopping his brow. He suspected that at the other end of the wire a certain gray-haired, aristocratic old lady was having violent hysterics to the immediate concern of three maids and an asthmatic Pekinese, but it did not disturb his equanimity.

"It's all right," he announced. "Aunt Emmy expects you; I didn't tell you, did I, that the lady I'm taking you to is my aunt? No matter. She's awfully easy if you get on the right side of her; I've always managed her beautifully ever since I was a kid, and you'll have her rolling over and playing dead in no time. Fifteen miles more to go, Lou, and we'll be----"

"h.e.l.lo, there, Jim." An oil-soaked and greasy glove clapped his shoulder and as he turned, the same voice, suddenly altered, stammered: "Oh, I beg your pardon----"

"'Lo, Harry!" Jim turned to greet a tall, lean individual more tanned than himself, with little, fine, weather lines about his eyes and an abrupt quickness of gesture which denoted his hair-triggered nerves.

"What are you doing in this man's town?"