Girl Alone Part 4

Eight o'clock was the supper hour on the farm in the summertime, when every hour of daylight had to be spent in the orchards and fields. When the long dining table, covered with red-and-brown-checked oilcloth, was finally set, down to the last iron-handled knife, Sally was faint with hunger, for supper was at six at the orphanage.

Sally had peeled a huge dishpan of potatoes, had shredded a giant head of pale green cabbage for coleslaw, had watched the pots of cooking string beans, turnips and carrots; had rolled in flour and then fried great slabs of round steak-all under the critical eye of Mrs. Carson, who had found herself free to pick over the day's harvest of blackberries for canning.

"I suppose we'll have to let Sally eat at the table with us," Pearl grumbled to her mother, heedless of the fact that Sally overheard. "In the city a family wouldn't dream of sitting down to table with the servants. I'm sick of living on a farm and treating the hired help like members of the family."

"I thought you liked having David Nash sit at table with us," Mrs.

Carson reminded her.

"Well, David's different. He's a university student and a football hero," Pearl defended herself. "But the other hired men and the Orphans'

Home girl-"

Clem Carson appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Supper ready?"

"Yes, Papa. Thanks for the candy, but I do wish you'd get it in a box, not in a paper sack," Pearl pouted. "I'll ring the bell. Hurry up and wash before the others come in."

While Clem Carson was pumping water into a tin wash basin, just inside the kitchen door, Pearl swung the big copper dinner bell, standing on the narrow back porch, her lavender silk skirt fluttering about her thick legs.

Sally fled to the dining room then, ashamed to have David Nash see her in the betraying uniform of the orphanage.

She had obediently set nine places at the long table, not knowing who all of those nine would be, but she found out before many minutes pa.s.sed. Clem Carson sat at one end of the table, Mrs. Carson at the other. And before David and the other hired men appeared, a tiny, bent little old lady, with kind, vague brown eyes and trembling hands, came shuffling in from somewhere to seat herself at her farmer son's right hand. Sally learned later that everyone called her Grandma, and that she was Clem Carson's widowed mother. Immediately behind the little old lady came a big, hulking, loose-jointed man of middle age, with a slack, grinning mouth, a stubble of gray beard on his receding chin, a vacant, idiotic smile in his pale eyes.

At sight of Sally, shrinking timidly against the chair which was to be hers, the half-wit lunged toward her like a playful, overgrown puppy.

One of his clammy hands, pale because they could not be trusted with farm work, reached out and patted her cheek.

"Pur-ty girl, pur-ty sister," he articulated slowly, a light of pleasure gleaming in the pale vacancy of his eyes.

"Now, now, Benny, be good, or Ma'll send you to bed without your supper," the little old lady spoke as if he were a naughty child of three. "You mustn't mind him, Sally. He won't hurt you. I hope you'll like it here on the farm. It's real pretty in the summertime."

The two nondescript hired men had taken their places, slipping into their chairs silently and apologetically. David Nash had changed his blue work shirt and "jeans" trousers for a white shirt, dark blue polka-dotted tie, and a well-fitting but inexpensive suit of brown homespun. Sally, squeezed between the vague little old grandmother and the vacant-eyed half-wit, beyond whom the two hired men sat, found herself directly across from David Nash, beside whom Pearl Carson sat, her chair drawn more closely than necessary.

"My, you look grand, Davie!" Pearl confided in a low, artificially sweet voice. "My cold's lots better. Papa'll let us drive in to the city to the movies if you ask him real nice."

It was then that Sally Ford, who had experienced so many new emotions that day, felt a pang that made every other heartache seem mild by comparison. And two girls, one a girl alone in the world, the other pampered and adored by her family, held their breath as they awaited David Nash's reply.

"Sorry, but I can't tonight," David Nash answered Pearl Carson's invitation courteously but firmly. "It would be 'way after nine when we got to town, and we wouldn't get back until nearly midnight-no hours for a farm hand to be keeping. Besides, I've got to study, long as I can keep awake."

"You're always studying when I want you to take me somewhere," Pearl pouted. "I don't see why you can't forget college during your summer vacation. Go get some more hot biscuits, Sally," she added sharply.

Except for Pearl's chatter and David's brief, courteous replies, the meal was eaten in silence, the hungry farmer and his hired men hunching over their food, wolfing it, disposing of such vast quant.i.ties of fried steak, vegetables, hot biscuits, home-made pickles, preserves, pie and coffee that Sally was kept running between kitchen and dining room to replenish bowls and plates from the food kept warming on the stove. In spite of her own hunger she ate little, restrained by timidity, but after her twelve years of orphanage diet the meal seemed like a banquet to her.

No one spoke to her, except Mrs. Carson and Pearl, to send her on trips to the kitchen, but it did not occur to her to feel slighted. It was less embarra.s.sing to be ignored than to be plied with questions.

Sometimes she raised her fluttering eyelids to steal a quick glance at David Nash, and every glance deepened her joy that he was there, that he sat at the same table with her, ate the same food, some of which she had cooked. His superiority to the others at that table was so strikingly evident that he seemed G.o.d-like to her. His pride, his poise, his golden, masculine beauty, his strength, his evident breeding, his ambition, formed such a contrast to the qualities of the orphaned boys she had known that it did not occur to her to hope that he would notice her. But once when her blue eyes stole a fleeting glimpse of his face she was startled to see that his eyes were regarding her soberly, sympathetically.

He smiled-a brief flash of light in his eyes, an upward curl to his well-cut lips. She was so covered with a happy confusion that she did not hear Mrs. Carson's harsh nasal voice commanding her to bring more b.u.t.ter from the cellar until the farmer's wife uttered her order a second time.

In spite of the prodigious amount of food eaten, the meal was quickly over. It was not half-past eight when Clem Carson sc.r.a.ped back his chair, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve.

"Now, Sally, I'll leave you to clear the table and wash up," Mrs. Carson said briskly. "I've got to measure and sugar my blackberries for tomorrow's jam-making. A farmer's wife can't take Sunday off this time o' year, and have fruit spoil on her hands."

While Sally was stacking the soiled supper plates on the dining table, the telephone rang three short and one long ring, and Pearl, who had been almost forcibly holding David Nash in conversation, sprang to answer it. The instrument was fastened to the dining room wall. Pearl stood lolling against it, a delighted smile on her face, her fingers picking at the torn wallpaper.

"Un-hunh!... Sure!... Oh, that'll be swell, Ross! I was just wishing for some excitement!... How many's coming? Five?... Oh, you hush! Sure, we'll dance! We got a grand radio, you know-get Chicago and.... All right, hurry up! And, oh, say, Ross, you might pick up another girl.

Sadie Pratt, or somebody. I got a sweetie of my own. Un-hunh! David Nash, a junior from A. & M., is staying with us this summer. Didn't you know?... Am I? I'll tell the world! You just wait till you see him, and then _you'll_ want to jump in the river!... Aw, quit your kidding!...

Well, hurry! 'Bye!"

Before the one-sided conversation was concluded, David Nash had quietly left the room by way of the kitchen door. When Sally staggered in with her armload of soiled dishes she found David at the big iron sink, pouring hot water from a heavy black teakettle into a granite dishpan.

"Thought I'd help," he said in a low voice, to keep Pearl from overhearing. "You must be tired and bewildered, and washing up for nine people is no joke. Give me the gla.s.ses first," he added casually as he reached for the wire soap shaker that hung on a nail above the sink.

"Oh, please," Sally gasped in consternation. "I can do them. It won't take me any time. Why, at the Home, six of us girls would wash dishes for three hundred. They wouldn't like it," she added in a terrified whisper, her eyes fluttering first toward the dining room door, then toward the big pantry where Mrs. Carson was picking over her blackberries.

"I like to wash dishes," David said firmly, and that settled it, at least so far as he was concerned.

Sally was trotting happily between table and cupboard when Pearl came in, stormy-eyed, sullen-mouthed.

"Well, I must say, you're a quick worker-and I don't mean on dishes!"

she snapped at Sally. "So this is the way you have to study, Mr. David Nash! But I suppose she pulled a sob story on you and just roped you in.

You'd better find out right now, Miss Sally Ford, that you can't shirk your work on his farm. That's not what Papa got you for-"

"I insisted on helping with the dishes, Pearl," David interrupted the bitter tirade in his firm, quiet way. "Want to get a dish cloth and help dry them?" There was a twinkle in his eyes and he winked ever so slightly at Sally.

"I've got to dress. Five or six of the bunch are coming over to dance to the radio music. Did you hear what I said about you?" Pearl answered, her shallow blue eyes coquetting with David.

"About me?" David pretended surprise. "Is that all, Sally? Well, I'll go on up to my room and study awhile, if I can stay awake."

"You're going to dance with me-with us," Pearl wailed, her flat voice harsh with disappointment. "I told Ross Willis to bring another partner for himself, because I was counting on you-"

"Awfully sorry, but I've got to study. I thought I told you at supper that I had to study," David reminded her mildly, but there was the steel of determination in his casual voice.

Pearl flung out of the room then, her face twisted with the first grimaces of crying.

"We'd better wash out and rinse these dish cloths," David said imperturbably, but his gold-flecked eyes and his strong, characterful mouth smiled at Sally. "My mother taught me that-and a good many other things."

A little later, under cover of the swishing of water in the granite dish pan, David spoke in a low voice to the girl who worked so happily at his side:

"Take it as easy as you can. They'll work you to death if you let them.

And-if you need any help, _day or night_," he emphasized the words significantly, so that once again a pulse of fear throbbed in Sally's throat, "just call on me. Remember, I'm an orphan myself. But it's easier for a boy. The world can be mighty hard on a girl alone."

"Thank you," Sally trembled, her voice scarcely a whisper, for Mrs.

Carson was moving heavily in the pantry nearby.

Fifteen minutes later, as Sally was sweeping the big kitchen, shouts of laughter and loud, gay words told her that the party of farm girls and boys had arrived. With David gone to his garret room to study, Sally suddenly felt very small and forlorn, very much what he had called her-a girl alone.

The sounds of boisterous gayety penetrated to every corner of the small house, but they echoed most loudly in Sally's heart. For she was sixteen with all the desires and dreams of any other girl of sixteen. And she loved parties, although she had never been to a small, intimate one in a private home in all her life.

She leaned on her broom, trembling, desire to have a good time fighting with her inst.i.tution-bred timidity. Then she looked down at her dress-the blue-and-white-checked gingham, faded, dull, that she had worn for months at the orphanage. If they should come into the kitchen-any of those laughing, gay girls and boys-and find her in the uniform of state charity they would despise her, never dream of asking her to come in, to dance-

Her hands suddenly gripped her broom fiercely. Within a minute she had finished her last task of the evening, had brushed the crumbs and dust into the black tin dust pan, emptied it into the kitchen range. Then, breathless with haste, afraid that timidity would overtake her, she ran up the back stairs to the garret.