Part 41 (1/2)

”Yes'm, eaten.”

”I do hope you aren't going to be careless in the way you talk, Tom. I hope you haven't learned a lot of new slang.”

”Yes'm.”

”You look well, anyway!” Hertha said, surveying him carefully.

She was pleased not only at his good health, but at the way he dressed, the evident care he had taken to be neat and cleanly. Her pride in him grew for she could see that he had improved as he had taken on responsibility. Evidently it had thus far worked well for him to break loose from his women folk and school and to s.h.i.+ft for himself.

”What you doing, Hertha?” Tom questioned.

She told him a little of her life, her pleasant room upstairs, her work at stenography. But she preferred to listen, and before long he was again the chief talker, retailing every bit of news, no matter how trivial, that had come in the letters from home. Her eagerness was so evident, and her happiness in seeing him so apparent, that Tom wondered to himself why she had never given them the chance to communicate with her during the months she had been away. As though she sensed his question she said, hesitating, the blood rus.h.i.+ng to her cheeks:

”You mustn't think I didn't want to hear from everybody; I did so much.

And I sent them cards at Christmas that I was well. Were you at school then?”

For answer he drew from his pocket her gift, and spun the top a moment on his sleeve when it fell to the floor. Hertha picked it up as she had picked up so many of his toys and put it in his brown hand where it descended to his pocket again. She was standing now, looking into his face. ”Mammy told me,” she said, ”not to try to live in two worlds, not until I was sure fixed in the new one and,” shaking her head, ”it takes a long time to get fixed. But that wasn't the only reason. If I'd written and they'd answered--it's such a little place, sometimes not half-a-dozen letters in the post office--why, every one in Merryvale would have known where I was.”

She hesitated, blus.h.i.+ng, but she had said enough. The look of anger on the boy's face recalled suddenly to her remembrance the Sunday that they had stopped on the porch of the great house and Lee Merryvale had tried to send Tom home alone. Did he guess the shame of the weeks after his departure, weeks that all her pride had not been able wholly to push from her memory? She shrank at his rough answer.

”You're right,” he said. ”I's glad you won't have nothing to do with that skunk.”

There was a rush of feet on the kitchen stairs, and Bob surprised them both by plunging into the room.

”What are you doing up so late?” Hertha demanded, but Bob did not hear her.

”Miss Ogilvie,” he said, all excitement, ”the cook told me that Tom is here.”

”Yes,” Hertha answered, and then with a gesture of introduction, dropping into the phraseology of home said, ”Bob, meet Tom.”

The little boy showed a moment's surprise, then accepting the race of his hero, Tom-of-the-Woods, as a simple fact, asked eagerly, ”Did you bring your top?”

Tom, surprised at this greeting, brought out the top again.

”Come along,” Bob cried, and leading the way they all three went out of the house down the stoop.

”You must do awfully well,” Hertha whispered as under the street lamp the hero of her story began slowly to wind his string.

”What you been giving him?” he asked, nodding to the little boy whose gleaming blue eyes and intense interest in the proceedings augured more than the mere pleasure in seeing a top spin.

”I've just been telling him a few things,” she answered lightly.

She stood on the steps and watched with delight Tom's careful choice of the best spot on the pavement for his spin and smiled to see the two boy-faces, one so pink and white, the other so brown, each intent on the business in hand.

It was a queer trick. Despite the many times Hertha had seen it, she was never quite sure at what moment the top, spinning at a marvelous pace, was caught up by the spinner to disappear in his pocket. And if she felt the illusion, despite her familiarity with it, there was no question but that Bob in the dim light, looking for the miraculous, found it. He regarded Tom as a magician and only hoped for some new manifestation of his power when he straightened himself up and stood before them.

”I must go now,” he said.