Girl Alone Part 8

Sally's eyes, drowned in tears, fluttered toward David.

"Don't you think you're going pretty far, Mr. Carson?" David asked abruptly.

"No offense, no offense," Carson protested hastily, with a chuckle that he meant to sound conciliatory. "I'm a man that likes his joke, and it does strike me as funny that a fine, upstanding college man like you, due to come into property some day, should cotton to a scared little rabbit of an orphan like Sally here-"

"That'll do, Clem!" Mrs. Carson interrupted sharply. "Get ahead with your breakfast and clear out, all of you! Sally and me have got a big day's work ahead of us. Pearl, I want you to drive to Capital City for some more Mason jars for me. I'm all out."

Later, when Sally was washing dishes, Pearl bounced into the kitchen, dressed for her trip to the city, her arms full of soiled white shoes, stockings and silk underwear.

"Sally," she said, her voice like a whip-lash, "I want you to clean these shoes for me today and wash out these stockings and underwear. See that you do a good job, or you'll have to do it over."

Sally, raking the suds from the dishpan off her arms and hands, accepted the pile of garments dumbly, but resentment gushed hotly in her throat.

"I've got enough work laid out for Sally to keep her busy every minute today," Mrs. Carson rebuked Pearl sharply. "Why can't you do your own cleaning, Pearl?"

"Because I've got a luncheon date and a matinee in town today, and I need these things for tonight. I'm going to a party at the Mullins'

Goodby, Mom. Two dozen jars enough?"

When Sally was again bent over the dishpan she heard the little old grandmother's uncertain, quavering voice:

"It ain't fair, Debbie, the way you let Pearl run over Sally. She's a nice, polite-spoken little girl, the best worker I ever see."

"I know, Ma," Mrs. Carson answered in so kind a voice that fresh tears swam in Sally's eyes. "Pearl's been spoiled. But I'm too busy now to take it out of her. I wonder, Ma, if you couldn't rip up them other two dresses that Pearl gave Sally? The child really ain't got a thing to wear. If you'll just rip the seams, I'll st.i.tch 'em myself at night, if I ain't too tired."

Sally whirled from the dishpan, stooped swiftly and laid her lips for an instant upon Mrs. Carson's hand. Then, flushing vividly, she ran back to the kitchen sink, seized the big flour-sack dish towel and began to polish a gla.s.s with intense energy.

Although Mrs. Carson made no comment on Sally's shy caress, the girl felt that from that moment the farmer's wife was her friend, undeclared but staunch.

Knowing that any day might prove to be her last on the farm, for Carson never let slip an opportunity to threaten her by innuendo with the disgrace of being sent back to the Home, Sally found a ray of comfort in the fact that Grandma Carson, probably because she felt sorry for Sally, constantly hectored as she was by the jealous, vicious-tongued Pearl, was slowly but surely completing the necessary alterations upon the other two dresses that Pearl had given her.

The vague-eyed, kindly little old woman finished the alterations on Sat.u.r.day morning, and Sally sped to her garret room with them, there to try them on and gloat over them. Then, her eyes darting now and then to the closed door, she hastily made a bundle of the three new dresses and hid it under the cornshuck mattress of her bed. Maybe it would be stealing to take the dresses if she had to run away, but she couldn't hope to escape in the orphanage uniform-

Early Sat.u.r.day afternoon Mrs. Carson announced that she had to go into the city to do some shopping. The farmer suggested that Pearl drive her in, since he himself was to be busy setting up the cider mill in a shack he had built at the foot of the lane, where it ran into the state highway.

"And you might as well take the Dodge and let Ma and Benny go in with you. They haven't seen a picture show for a month," Carson suggested.

The thought of seeing a movie overcame Sally's timidity. "Would there be room for me, Mrs. Carson? I could help you with your shopping, help carry things-"

"I don't see why not," Mrs. Carson answered. "I got a lot of trotting around to do and it's mighty hot-"

"Mama, if she goes, I won't go a step," Pearl burst out shrilly. "I won't have her tagging after us all afternoon, making eyes at every man that speaks to me!"

"Pearl, Pearl, I'm afraid you're spoiled rotten!" Mrs. Carson shook her head sadly. "I'll bring you a pair of them fiber silk stockings, Sally, to wear to church tomorrow night with your flowered taffeta," she offered brusquely, by way of consolation.

When the car had swept down the lane and Sally was left alone in the house, she busied herself furiously in an effort to dissipate her loneliness and disappointment, and a fear that grew upon her with the realization that Carson had not accompanied his family to town. The two hired men had left the farm for Capital City, immediately after the noon meal, wages in their pockets, bent on an afternoon and evening of city pleasures. On the entire farm there was no one but herself, Carson and David. And where was David? If she needed him terribly, would he fail her?

As the afternoon wore on, and still Carson did not appear, Sally's grat.i.tude for Mrs. Carson's inarticulate kindness sent her on a flying trip to the orchard to gather enough hard, sour apples to make pies for supper. Carson, she began to hope, was so busy setting up the cider mill that he would have no time to take her back to the orphanage, even if he wanted to. Maybe she was safe for a while; she would not run away just yet, for if she ran away she would never see David again-

It was fun to have the whole big kitchen to herself. Humming under her breath, she cut chilled lard into well-sifted flour, using the full amount that Mrs. Carson's pie crust called for. At the orphanage the pie crust was tough and leathery, because the matron would not permit the cook to use enough lard. What joy it was to cook on a prosperous farm, where there was an abundance of every good thing to eat! If only she could stay the whole summer through! She could stand the hard work....

As she piled the sliced apples thickly into the crimped pie crust, she thought wistfully of Mrs. Carson, who was kind to her although she was a hard taskmistress.

"Maybe," Sally reflected sadly, dusting around nutmeg over the thickly sugared apples, "if I could stay on here, Mrs. Carson would want to adopt me. But of course Pearl and Mr. Carson wouldn't let her. They hate me because David likes me and won't marry Pearl. And I like David better than anybody in the world," she confessed to herself, as the pink in her cheeks deepened. "But I would love to have a mother, even if it was only a ready-made mother. I wonder why some girls have everything, and others nothing? Why should Pearl have a mother who just spoils her past all enduring? Pearl isn't good-she isn't even good to her mother."

When her three big apple pies were in the oven, she washed the bread bowl in which she had mixed her pie crust; washed and dried vigorously the big yellow pine board and rolling pin, and restored them to their proper places. Then, feeling very useful and virtuous, she set the table for supper, singing little sc.r.a.ps of popular songs which she had heard over the radio during her week on the farm.

By that time her pies were baked to a deep, golden brown, with little glazed blisters across their top crusts.

"If I do say it myself," she said, in her little old-woman way, her head c.o.c.ked sideways as she surveyed her handiwork, "those are real pies. I hope Mrs. Carson will be surprised and pleased."

Then, because she was very tired and the late afternoon sun was making an inferno of the kitchen, Sally climbed the steep back stairs to the garret, intending to take a cooling sponge bath and a short nap before the family returned, hungry for supper. She was about to pa.s.s David's door when his voice halted her:

"That you, Sally? I've been enjoying your singing, even if I did spend more time listening than studying."

She went involuntarily toward him. "I didn't know you were up here, David," she told him. "I'm sorry I interrupted your studying. I wouldn't have sung if I'd known you were up here."

The boy was seated at a small pine table, covered with books and papers, but as she advanced hesitatingly into the room he rose.

"Come on in," he invited hospitably. "Wouldn't you like to see my books?

Some of them are fascinating-full of pictures of prize stock and model chicken farms and champion egg-laying hens and things like that. Look,"

he commanded s.n.a.t.c.hing up a book as if eager to detain her. "Here's a picture of a cow that my grandfather owns. She holds the state record for b.u.t.ter-fat production. Her name's Beauty Bess-look!"

Sally, without a thought as to the impropriety of being in a man's bedroom, slipped into the chair he was holding for her and bent her little braid-crowning head gravely over her book.

"I'm going to stock the farm with nothing but pedigreed animals when it's mine," David told her, enthusiastically. "Look, here's the kind-"

And he bent low over her, so that his arm was about her shoulder as he riffled the pages of the book, seeking the picture he wanted her to see.

A sudden gust of wind, presaging a summer shower, slammed the door shut, but the two were so absorbed they did not hear the faint click of the lock. Nor did they hear, a little later, the sound of the stealthy, futile turning of the k.n.o.b, the retreat of carefully muted footsteps.

David was bending low over Sally, his cheek almost touching hers, excitedly expounding the merits of crop rotation, and pointing out text-book confirmation of his theories, when sudden, evil words shocked their attention from the fascinations of the agricultural text-book:

"Caught you at last! Thought you was mighty slick, didn't you?-locking the door! I've a good mind to whip you every step of the way back to the orphan asylum, you lying, nasty little-" Carson's voice, hoa.r.s.e with anger and exultation over his coming revenge upon the girl who had dared jeopardize his daughter's happiness, stopped with a gasp upon the evil word he had spat out, for his shoulders, as he tried to wriggle into the room from the small window, were stuck in the too-narrow frame.

If the wind had not been roaring about the house, banging branches of shade trees against the sloping roof upon which David's window looked, they would necessarily have heard his approach, but as it was they were totally unprepared for the sight of his head and shoulders and breast, framed in the window, his glittering black eyes fixed upon them with evil exultation.

Sally struggled to her feet as David leaped toward the window. She had a fleeting glimpse of his rage-distorted young face, his lips snarled back from his teeth.

"David! Don't, David!" she cried, her voice a high, thin wail of terror-terror for David, not for Carson.

"You're not fit to live, Carson," David's young voice broke in its rage, but there was no faltering in the power behind the blow which crashed into the farmer's face.

Sally, sinking to her knees in her terror, heard the rending sound of flimsy timber giving way, then the more awful noise of a big body sliding rapidly down the roof. She half fainted then, so that when David tried to lift her to her feet she swayed dizzily against him, her eyes dazed, her ashen lips hanging slackly.

"Can you hear me, Sally?" David's voice, a little tremulous with awe at that which he had done, came like a series of loud claps in her ears.

She clung to him weakly, her eyes glancing fearfully from the window to his set, pale young face. Then she nodded slowly, like a child awakening from a nightmare.

"I think I've killed him, Sally. He hasn't made a sound since he crashed to the ground." David's hazel eyes were as wide as hers, and almost as frightened.