FullReads

“You’d better run along home, Nora; it’s late, and I’m all right. I’ll go to bed now, and let the place go as it is until tomorrow. ”

The girl demurred, but presently she and Steve were walking back to the MacPhails’ house, through the black streets; but they did not hurry now. They walked two blocks in silence, Steve looking ahead into dark space with glum thoughtfulness, the girl eyeing him covertly.

“What is the matter?” she asked abruptly.

Steve smiled pleasantly down at her.

“Nothing. Why?”

“There is,” she contradicted him. “You’re thinking of something unpleasant, something to do with me. ”

He shook his head.

“That’s wrong, wrong on the face of it — they don’t go together. ”

But she was not to be put off with compliments. “You’re — you’re —“ She stood still in the dim street, searching for the right word.

“You’re on your guard — you don’t trust me — that’s what it is!”

Steve smiled again, but with narrowed eyes. This reading of his mind might have been intuitive, or it might have been something else.

He tried a little of the truth:

“Not distrustful — just wondering. You know you didgive me an empty gun to go after the burglar with, and you know you wouldn’tlet me chase him. ”

Her eyes flashed, and she drew herself up to the last inch of her slender live feet.

“So you think —” she began indignantly. Then she drooped toward him, her hands fastening upon the lapels of his coat. “Please, please, Mr. Threefall, you’ve got to believe that I didn’t know the revolver was empty. It was Dr. MacPhail’s. I took it when I ran out of the house, never dreaming that it wasn’t loaded. And as for not letting you chase the burglar — I was afraid to be left alone again. I’m a little coward. I — I — Please believe in me, Mr. Threefall. Be friends with me. I need friends. I —”

Womanhood had dropped from her. She pleaded with the small white face of a child of twelve — a lonely, frightened child. And because his suspicions would not capitulate immediately to her appeal, Steve felt dumbly miserable, with an obscure shame in himself, as if he were lacking in some quality he should have had.

She went on talking, very softly, so that he had to bend his head to catch the words. She talked about herself, as a child would talk.

“It’s been terrible! I came here three months ago because there was a vacancy in the telegraph office. I was suddenly alone in the world, with very little money, and telegraphy was all I knew that could be capitalised. It’s been terrible here! The town — I can’t get accustomed to it. It’s so bleak. No children play in the streets. The people are different from those I’ve! Known — cruder, more brutal. Even the houses — street after street of them without curtains in the windows, without flowers. No grass in the yards, No trees.

“But I had to stay — there was nowhere else to go. I thought I could stay until I had saved a little money — enough to take me away. But saving money takes so long. Dr. MacPhail’s garden has been like a piece of paradise to me. If it hadn’t been for that I don’t think I could have — I’d have; gone crazy! The doctor and his wife have been nice to me; some people have been nice to me, but most of them are people I can’t understand. And not all have been nice. At first it was awful. Men would say things, and women would say things, and when I was afraid of them they thought I was stuck up. Larry — Mr. Ormsby — saved me from that. He made them let me alone, and he persuaded the MacPhails to let me live with them. Mr. Rymer has helped me, too, given me courage; but I lose it again as soon as I’m away from the sight of his face and the sound of his voice.