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His father, busy at work, greeted him cheerily, but had no dime for powder and shot. Pay for the work was not to be had until the first of December, and meanwhile every penny must be saved for coal and for Ellie's shoes. "It leaves Thanksgiving out in the cold, doesn't it, Bub? But we'll make it up at Christmas, maybe," said Mr. Waddle, as Obadiah turned to go.
"You 'managed' ?" She fancied he paused on the word ironically. "But why?" "Why what?" "Why on earth should you try to prevent Ellie's waiting for Nelson, if for once in her life she wants to?" Susy, conscious of reddening suddenly, drew back as though the leap of her tell-tale heart might have penetrated the blue flannel shoulder against which she leaned.
"Oh, those Binney children!" she said. "They were so funny and dear! I had a delightful time there. They were all much better, Paul's fever entirely gone, and Ellie's throat hardly inflamed at all. They wanted to get up, but I didn't think they would better before to-morrow, so we played menagerie, and had a great time." "Played menagerie?" "Yes.
In the violence of her emotion, she rocked back and forth, swaying like a reed in some fierce blast the tall form, to whom she clung. "Oh, my lovely! my lovely! To think you should be shut up here! To see Miss Ellie's baby jailed, among the off-scourings of the earth! Oh, you beautiful white deer! tracked and tore to pieces by wolves, and hounds, and jackalls! Oh, honey!
Poor Ellie! she would not need shoes now: the doctors feared she would never walk again. The firm sent a twenty-dollar bill to the child's mother, another "Cash" was engaged to take Ellie's place, and the matter was speedily forgotten. Not growing better at the hospital, Ellie begged to be taken home.
Ellie's letter lay on the floor: reluctantly she stooped to pick it up, and one by one the expected phrases sprang out at her.
That he should have forgotten it seemed so unbelievable that she wondered, with a new leap of fear, if he were using the wretched Ellie's indiscretion as a means of escape from a tie already wearied of. Suddenly she raised her head with a laugh. "After all you were right when you wanted me to be your mistress." He turned on her with an astonished stare. "You my mistress?"
My head ain't hard enough to run it plum into a wolf's jaws. I ain't 'sponsible for nobody's acts but my own, and if Dyce have committed a pius fraud, in this here hank'cher bizness, to screen Miss Ellie's child, why, you see yourself, I had no hand in it.
She straightened herself, still kneeling before him, and lifted her head so that the firelight behind her turned her hair into a ruddy halo. "Oh, Nick, the bracelet Ellie's bracelet.... I've never returned it to her," she faltered out. He felt himself recoiling under the hands with which she clutched his knees.
She broke open the envelope, and four or five stamped and sealed letters fell from it. All were addressed, in Ellie's hand, to Nelson Vanderlyn Esqre; and in the corner of each was faintly pencilled a number and a date: one, two, three, four with a week's interval between the dates. "Goodness " gasped Susy, understanding.
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