Dorothy

But the gentlewoman was now gaining control of her nerves and fully understood that it was over-affection, rather than disobedience, which made Dinah act so provokingly. With one of her kindest smiles, she took the heavy gown back to the closet herself, and secured the lighter one suitable to the day. Then she explained:

"It's no silly whim, my girl, that sends me down town on such a hot morning. Something serious has happened. Something which has just come to my knowledge and that I must try to set right at once. If you love me – help me, not hinder. You are to go with me, also. So, hurry and put on a fresh apron and cap. I can finish by myself."

"Yas'm. But yo' knows, honey, you-all only done lef yo' bed a speck o' time. Cayn't yo' business be put off, Miss Betty?"

"Not a minute. Not one single minute longer than necessary to take me to Baltimore Street. Hurry. Fix your own self. Don't bother about me."

"Yes'm. I'se gwine hu'y. But dat yere plumber gempleman – what erbout leabin' him, to go rummagin' 'round, puttin' new fixin's in whe' ol' ones do? Ain't you-all done bettah wait a little spell, an' 'tend to him, yo'se'f? Hey, Miss Betty?"

Dinah had touched upon her mistress's own regret, but a regret swallowed by so much of a calamity that she put it aside and merely pointed to the door, as if further speech were useless.

It was more than five minutes before Ephraim drove his well-groomed horses out of the eagle-gate, but it was in a very short time for one who moved as slowly as he, and he turned his head for orders, with expectation of: "The Park."

Quite to the contrary the word was:

"Baltimore Street. Kidder & Kidder's."

"Hey? 'D you say Eutaw Place, er Moun' Ver'n Avenoo?" he inquired.

"There, boy. You're not half so deaf as you pretend. Drive to Kidder & Kidder's, and do it at once," she repeated with decision.

"Yas'm. But does yo' know, Miss Betty, erbout a man was sunstroke yestiddy, Baltimo' Street way? It sutenly is pow'ful wa'm."

Mrs. Cecil vouchsafed no further parley with her too devoted coachman, though Dinah took it upon herself to administer one reproof which her fellow servant coolly ignored.

However, he had seen that in Mrs. Cecil's eye which brooked no disobedience, and so he guided his bays southward through the city, by wide thoroughfares and narrow, past crowding wagons and jangling street cars, till he turned into the densely packed street his lady had designated.

"Kidder & Kidder" were her men of business. He knew that. There had been no time, for years upon years, when a firm of this same name had not served the owners of Bellevieu. The first lawyer of that race had handed down the business to his heirs, as the first tenant of the rich estate had willed that to his. But it was now more common for the lady of the mansion to send for her advisers to visit her, than for her to visit them; and that there was something unusual in her present business both her old servitors realized.

It was something worth while to see how the elder Mr. Kidder, himself an octogenarian, retaining an almost youthful vigor, rose and salaamed, as this beautiful old gentlewoman, followed by her gray-haired maid in spotless attire, entered his rather dingy office. How the old-time courtesies were exchanged between these remnants of an earlier society, when brusqueness was considered ill-bred and suavity the mark of good blood.

A few such greetings past, and the old lawyer conducted his distinguished client into an inner room, exclusively his own, leaving Dinah to wait without, and whence the pair soon emerged; the lady urging: "You will kindly attend to it at once, please;" and he answering, with equal earnestness: "Immediately, Madam."

Then he escorted her to her carriage and stood bareheaded while she entered it: each courteously saluting the other as it rolled away, and he returning to his office with a look of anxiety on his fine face, as there was one of relief on hers.

"Well, I've done the best I could – now!" she exclaimed, after a time. "I've never entrusted any matter to Kidder & Kidder that did not end satisfactorily. That old firm is a rock in the midst of this shifting modernity!"

To which Dinah, not comprehending, replied with her usual:

"Yas'm. I spec' dat's so, honey, Miss Betty."

That evening both Ephraim and the maid, sitting under their own back porch, exchanged speculations concerning their lady's morning trip, and her subsequent quietude during the whole day.

"I 'low 'twas anudder will, our Miss Betty, she done get made. Dat's what dem lawyer gentlemen is most inginerally for. How many dem wills has she had writ, a'ready, Dinah?" queried Ephraim.

"Huh! I doan' know. Erbout fifty sixty, I reckon. She will her prop'ty off so many times, dey won' be nottin lef to will, bimeby. 'Twas dat, though, Ephraim, I 'low, too. Mebbe – Does dey put erbout makin' wills in de papahs, boy?"

"I doan' know. Likely. Why, Dinah?"

"Cayse, warn't no res' twel Miss Betty done sent yo' Methusalem out to de drug-sto' fo' to buy de ebenin' one. Spec' she was lookin' had Massa Kiddah done got it printed right. Doan' know what she want o' papahs, when she ain't looked at one this long spell, scusin 'twas to find out dat."

But neither of them guessed that Mrs. Cecil's interest lay in a large-typed advertisement, offering five hundred dollars reward for the return of the lost, humble little Dorothy C. Nor that this sum would have been twice as great, had not the worldly wisdom of Kidder & Kidder been larger than that of their aristocratic client.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BITER BIT

Even healthy Dorothy had rarely slept as soundly as she did that night, there in the airy barn on her bed of hay; and she had lain down as soon as she had finished her brief letter to her mother – which like those that had gone before it would travel no further than Mrs. Stott's range fire.

She woke in the morning to find it much later than usual when she was roused and that it was only Jim who was calling her. He did so softly, yet with evident excitement; and as soon as possible the girl got out of her hostess's too big nightgown and into her own clothes, still fresh from yesterday's laundering. Then she opened the door and ran to the trough of water, used for the cattle; and after a liberal ducking of her curly head, shook herself dry – for want of a better towel. Afterwards, to the barnyard, calling eagerly:

"Jim! O Jim!"

"Here I be. Don't holler. I'll come, soon's I take the milk in. I thought you'd sleep till doomsday!" he replied, still in a low tone, yet with less caution than he usually displayed.

She sat down on the barn door sill and waited. She had a strong reluctance to enter the cottage which was tightly closed and where she had so greatly suffered. So that it was with real delight she saw the lad was bringing a plate with him, as he returned, and guessed it to be her breakfast.

"Oh! how nice! I'll love to picnic out here, but how does it happen? and, Jim, what makes you so sober? Is – is she sick? Didn't she go to market last night? Tell – talk – why can't you? I want to hear everything, every single thing. I didn't know – I went to sleep – What a funny wagon it is, anyway!"

The big vehicle stood in the yard before them, its shafts resting on the ground; and the four mules used to draw it were feeding in the pasture beyond. Dorothy thought it wonderful how anybody, most of all a woman, could drive four mules, as Miranda did, without reins to guide them, yet make them so obedient to her will. The wagon, also, was a curiosity to her, though she had often seen similar ones on the streets at home.

It was a large affair, rising several feet upwards from its box, its ends projecting; forward over the dashboard and, at the rear, backward beyond a step and a row of chicken crates. The top was of canvas, that had once been white, and the tall sides were half of a brick-red, half of bright blue. Its capacity was enormous, and so prolific was the truck-farm that it was always well filled when it made its city trips.

"Have you had your breakfast, too, Jim?" asked Dorothy, rather critically inspecting hers, which did not at all suggest the dainty cooking of mother Martha.

"Yep. All I wanted. He – I reckon he's powerful sick."

"Can't you sit down by me for company? I feel so good this morning. I'd like somebody to talk to."

"A minute, maybe. I can make it up later."

"Jim Barlow, I think you're a splendid boy. I never saw anybody so faithful to such a horrid old woman. You never waste a bit of time, you only study when you ought to sleep, and yet – yet I didn't like you at all when I first saw you. When I get home and my father gets well, I'm going to tell him or the minister all about you, and ask them to get you a better place. To send you to school, or do anything you like."

The lad flushed with pleasure, and vainly tried to keep the bare feet of which he was so conscious out of sight in the hay upon the barn floor, where, for this brief moment, he dared to linger. Dorothy saw the movement and laughingly thrust forth her own pink toes, fresh from an ablution in the trough, and from which she had had to permanently discard her ragged ties.

"That's nothing. We're both the same. Anyway, a barefooted boy came to be president! Think of that. President James Barlow, of the United States! I salute you, Excellency, and request the honor of your sharing my brown-bread-and-treacle!"

Then she laughed, as she had not done for many days; from the sheer delight of life and the beautiful world around her. For it was beautiful, that first June day, despite the ugly cottage which blotted the landscape and the sordid implements of labor all about.

To his own amazement, the orphan farm boy laughed with her, as he did not know he could, as he surely never had before. This girl's coming had opened a new world to him. She had commended his ambition and made light of the difficulties in way of its achievement. She had assured him that "learning is easy as easy!" and she knew such a lot! She didn't scorn him because he was uncouth and ill-clad; and – Well, at that moment he was distinctly glad that she was barefooted like himself.

Recklessly forgetting that he was "using the time I was hired for" – the hire being board and lodging, only – he dropped down on the step and watched as she ate, so daintily that he could think of nothing but the sparrows on the ground. And as she ate she also talked; which in itself was wonderful. For he – Well, he couldn't talk and eat at the same time. It was an accomplishment far beyond him, one that had never been taught at the table of Miranda Stott. She not only chattered away but she made him chatter, too, now, in this unwonted freedom from his mistress's eye.

"Who's 'him'? Why, he's hern," he explained. "Her son, you know."

"No, I don't know. I know nothing – except that I'm a stolen little girl who's lost everybody, everything in the world she loves!" cried poor Dorothy, suddenly overcome in the midst of her gayety by the thought of her own sorrows.

Jim had never known girls and their ways, but he had the innate masculine dread of tears, and by the look of Dorothy's brown eyes he saw that tears portended. To change the subject, he answered her question definitely: