A little later, when Sally was seated primly beside Clem Carson, jolting
rapidly down the road that led past the orphanage toward the business
district of the city, the farmer nudged her in the ribs and chuckled:
"You're quite a kissing-bug, ain't you, Sally? How about a little kiss
for your new boss?"
Sally had shrunk as far away from Clem Carson as the seat of the
"flivver" permitted, phrases from Mrs. Stone's embarrassed, vague,
terrifying warnings boiling and churning in her mind: "Keep your body
pure"--"mustn't let men take any liberties with you"--"you're a big girl
now, things you ought to know"--"if you're led astray, it will be due to
evils in your own nature"--
She suddenly loathed herself, her budding, curving young body that she
had taken such innocent delight in as she bathed for her journey. She
wanted to shrink and shrink and shrink, until she was a little girl
again, too young to know "the facts of life," as Mrs. Stone, blushing
and embarrassed, had called the half-truths she had told Sally. She
wanted to climb over the door of the car, drop into the hot dust of the
road, and run like a dog-chased rabbit back into the safety of the Home.
There were no men there--no queer, different male beings who would want
to "take liberties"--
"My land! Scared of me?" Clem Carson chuckled. "You poor little chicken!
Don't mind me, Sally. I don't mean no harm, teasing you for a kiss. Land
alive! I got a girl of my own, ain't I? Darned proud of her, too, and
I'd cut the heart outa any man that tried to take advantage of her.
Ain't got no call to be scared of me, Sally."
She smiled waveringly, shyness making her lips stiff, but she relaxed a
little, though she kept as far away from the man as ever. In spite of
her dread of the future and her bitter disappointment over Miss Pond's
disclosures as to her mother, she was finding the trip to the farm an
adventure. In the twelve years of her life in the State Orphans' Asylum
she had never before left the orphanage unaccompanied by droves of other
sheep-like, timid little girls, and unchaperoned by sharp-voiced,
eagle-eyed matrons.
She felt queer, detached, incomplete, like an arm or a leg dissevered
from a giant body; she even had the panicky feeling that, like such a
dismembered limb, she would wither and die away from that big body of
which she had been a part for so long. But it was pleasant to bump
swiftly along the hot, dusty white road, fringed with odorous, flowering
weeds. Houses became less and less frequent; few children ran barefoot
along the road, scurrying out of the path of the automobile.
Occasionally a woman, with a baby sprawling on her hip, appeared in the
doorway of a roadside shack and shaded her eyes with her hand as she
squinted at the car.
As the miles sped away Carson seemed to feel the need of impressing upon
her the fact that her summer was not to be one of unalloyed pleasure. He
sketched the life of the farm, her own work upon it, as if to prepare
her for the worst. "My wife's got the reputation of being a hard woman,"
he told her confidentially. "But she's a good woman, good clean through.
She works her fingers to the bone, and she can't abide a lazy, trifling
girl around the place. You work hard, Sally, and speak nice and
respectful-like, and you two'll get on, I warrant."
"Yes, sir," Sally stammered.
"Well, Sally," he told her at last, "here's your new home. This lane
leads past the orchards--I got ten acres in fruit trees, all of 'em
bearing--and the gardens, then right up to the house. Pretty fine place,
if I do say so myself. I got two hundred acres in all, quite a sizeable
farm for the middle west. Don't them orchards look pretty?"
Sally came out of her frightened reverie, forced her eyes to focus on
the beautiful picture spread out on a giant canvas before her. Then she
gave an involuntary exclamation of pleasure. Row after row of fruit
trees, evenly spaced and trimmed to perfection, stretched before her on
the right. The child in her wanted to spring from the seat of the car,
run ecstatically from tree to tree, to snatch sun-ripened fruit.
"You have a good fruit crop," she said primly.
"There's the house." The farmer pointed to the left. "Six rooms and a
garret. My daughter, Pearl, dogged the life out of me until I had
electric lights put in, and a fancy bathtub. She even made me get a
radio, but it comes in right handy in the evenings, specially in winter.
My daughter, Pearl, can think of more ways for me to spend money than I
can to earn it," he added with a chuckle, so that Sally knew he was
proud of Pearl, proud of her urban tastes.
The car swept up to the front of the house; Clem Carson's hand on the
horn summoned his women folks.
The house, which seemed small to Sally, accustomed to the big buildings
of the orphanage, was further dwarfed by the huge red barns that towered
at the rear. The house itself was white, not so recently painted as the
lordly barns, but it was pleasant and homelike, the sort of house which
Sally's chums at the orphanage had pictured as an ideal home, when they
had let their imaginations run away with them.
Sally herself, born with a different picture of home in her mind, had
romanced about a house which would have made this one look like
servants' quarters, but now that it was before her she felt a thrill of
pleasure. At least it was a home, not an institution.
A woman, big, heavy-bosomed, sternly corseted beneath her snugly
fitting, starched blue chambray house dress, appeared upon the front
porch and stood shading her eyes against the western sun, which revealed
the thinness of her iron-gray hair and the deep wrinkles in her tanned
face.
"Why didn't you drive around to the back?" she called harshly. "This
young-up ain't company, to be traipsin' through my front room. Did you
bring them rubber rings for my fruit jars?"
"You betcha!" Clem Carson refused to be daunted in Sally's presence.
"How's Pearl, Ma? Cold any better? I brought her some salve for her
throat and some candy."
"She's all right," Mrs. Carson shouted, as if the car were a hundred
yards away. "And why you want to be throwin' your money away on patent
medicine salves is more'n I can see! I can make a better salve any day
outa kerosene and lard and turpentine. Reckon you didn't get any
car'mels for me! Pearl's all you think of."
"Got you half a pound of car'mels," Carson shouted, laughing. "I'll
drive the new girl around back.
"Ma's got a sharp tongue, but she don't mean no harm," Carson chuckled,
as he swung the car around the house.
When it shivered to a stop between the barns and the house, the farmer
lifted out a few bundles which had crowded Sally's feet, then threw up
the cover of the hatch in the rear of the car, revealing more bundles.
Carson was loading her arms with parcels when he saw a miracle wrought
on her pale, timid face.
"Lord! You look pretty enough to eat!" Clem Carson ejaculated, but he
saw then that she was not even aware that he was speaking to her.
In one of the few books allowed for Sunday reading in the orphanage--a
beautiful, thick book with color-plate illustrations, its name, "Stories
from the Bible," lettered in glittering gold on a back of heavenly
blue--Sally had found and secretly worshiped the portrait of her ideal
hero. It was a vividly colored picture of David, forever fixed in
strong, beautiful grace, as he was about to hurl the stone from his
slingshot to slay the giant, Goliath. She had dreamed away many hours of
her adolescence and early young girlhood, the big book open on her knee
at the portrait of the Biblical hero, and it had not seemed like
sacrilege to adopt that sun-drenched, strong-limbed but slender boy as
the personification of her hopes for romance.
And now he was striding toward her--the very David of "Stories from the
Bible." True, the sheepskin raiment of the picture was exchanged for a
blue shirt, open at the throat, and for a pair of cheap, earth-soiled
"jeans" trousers; but the boy-man was the same, the same! As he strode
lightly, with the ease of an athlete or the light-footedness of a god,
the sun flamed in his curling, golden-brown hair. He was tall, but not
so tall as Clem Carson, and there were power and ease and youth in every
motion of his beautiful body.
"Did you get the plowshare sharpened, Mr. Carson? I've been waiting for
it, but in the meantime I've been tinkering with that little hand cider
press. We ought to do a good business with it if we set up a cider stand
on the state road, at the foot of the lane."
Joy deepened the sapphire of Sally's eyes, quivered along the curves of
her soft little mouth. For his voice was as she had dreamed it would
be--vibrant, clear, strong, with a thrill of music in it.
"Sure I got it sharpened, Dave," Carson answered curtly. "You oughta get
in another good hour with the cultivator before dark. You run along in
the back door there, Sally. Mrs. Carson will be needing you to help her
with supper."
The change in Carson's voice startled her, made her wince. Why was he
angry with her--and with David, whose gold-flecked hazel eyes were
smiling at her, shyly, as if he were a little ashamed of Carson for not
having introduced them? But, oh, his name was David! David! It had had
to be David.
In the big kitchen, dominated by an immense coal-and-wood cook stove,
Sally found Mrs. Carson busy with supper preparations. Her daughter,
Pearl, drifted about the kitchen, coughing at intervals to remind her
mother that she was ill.
Pearl Carson, in that first moment after Sally had bumped into her at
the door, had seemed to the orphaned girl to be much older than she, for
her plump body was voluptuously developed and overdecked with finery.
The farmer's daughter wore her light red hair deeply marcelled. The
natural color in her broad, plump cheeks was heightened by rouge,
applied lavishly over a heavy coating of white powder.
Her lavender silk crepe dress was made very full and short of skirt, so
that her thick-ankled legs were displayed almost to the knee. It was
before the day of knee dresses for women and Sally, standing there
awkwardly with her own bundle and the parcels which Carson had thrust
into her arms, blushed for the extravagant display of unlovely flesh.
But Pearl Carson, if not exactly pretty, was not homely, Sally was
forced to admit to herself. She looked more like one of her father's
healthy, sorrel-colored heifers than anything else, except that the
heifer's eyes would have been mild and kind and slightly melancholy,
while Pearl Carson's china-blue eyes were wide and cold, in an insolent,
contemptuous stare.
"I suppose you're the new girl from the Orphans' Home," she said at
last. "What's your name?"
"Sa-Sally Ford," Sally stammered, institutional shyness blotting out her
radiance, leaving her pale and meek.
"Pearl, you take Sally up to her room and show her where to put her
things. Did you bring a work dress?" Mrs. Carson turned from inspecting
a great iron kettle of cooking food on the stove.
"Yes'm," Sally gulped. "But I only brought two dresses--my every-day
dress and this one. Mrs. Stone said you'd--you'd give me some of
P-Pearl's."
She flushed painfully, in humiliation at having to accept charity and in
doubt as to whether she was to address the daughter of the house by her
Christian name, without a "handle."
Pearl, switching her short, lavender silk skirts insolently, led the way
up a steep flight of narrow stairs leading directly off the kitchen to
the garret. The roof, shaped to fit the gables of the house, was so low
that Sally's head bumped itself twice on their passage of the dusty,
dark corridor to the room she was to be allowed to call her own.
"No, not that door!" Pearl halted her sharply. "That's where David Nash,
one of the hired men, sleeps."
Sally wanted to stop and lay her hand softly against the door which his
hand had touched, but she did not dare. "I--I saw him," she faltered.
"Oh, you did, did you?" Pearl demanded sharply. "Well, let me tell you,
young lady, you let David Nash alone. He's mine--see? He's not just an
ordinary hired hand. He's working his way through State A. & M. He's a
star, on the football team and everything. But don't you go trying any
funny business on David, or I'll make you wish you hadn't!"
"I--I didn't even speak to him," Sally hastened to reassure Pearl, then
hated herself for her humbleness.
"Here's your room. It's small, and it gets pretty hot in here in the
summer, but I guess it's better'n you're used to, at that," Pearl
Carson, a little mollified, swung open a flimsy pine door.
Sally looked about her timidly, her eyes taking in the low, sagging cot
bed, the upturned pine box that served as washstand, the broken rocking
chair, the rusty nails intended to take the place of a clothes closet;
the faded, dirty rag rug on the warped boards of the floor; the tiny
window, whose single sash swung inward and was fastened by a hook on the
wall.
"I'll bring you some of my old dresses," Pearl told her. "But you'd
better hurry and change into your orphanage dress, so's you can help
Mama with the supper. She's been putting up raspberries all day and
she's dead tired. I guess Papa told you you'd have to hustle this
summer. This ain't a summer vacation--for you. It is for me. I go to
school in the city in the winter. I'm second year high, and I'm only
sixteen," she added proudly. "What are you?"
Sally, who had been nervously untying her brown paper parcel, bent her
head lower so that she should not see the flare of hate in those pale
blue eyes which she knew would follow upon her own answer. "I'm--I'm
third year high." She did not have the courage to explain that she had
just finished her third year, that she would graduate from the
orphanage's high school next year.
"Third year?" Pearl was incredulous. "Oh, of course, the orphanage
school! _My_ school is at least two years higher than yours. We prepare
for college."
Sally nodded; what use to say that the orphanage school was a regular
public school, too, that it also prepared for college? And that Sally
herself had dreamed of working her way through college, even as David
Nash was doing?
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
passed. 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 quantities 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 embarrassing 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 god-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
butter 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 scraped 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 glasses 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 institution-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.
Her cold little hands trembled with eagerness as she jerked her work
dress over her head and arrayed her slight body in the lace-trimmed
white lawn "Sunday dress" which she had worn earlier in the day on her
trip from the orphanage. Excitedly, she slapped her pale, faintly
flushed cheeks to make them more red, then bit her lips hard in lieu of
lipstick.
When she tiptoed down the dark hall of the garret she found David Nash's
door ajar, caught a glimpse of the university student-farmhand bent over
a pine table crowded with books.
She crept on to the head of the narrow, steep stairs, and there her
courage failed her. The dance music, coming in full and strong over the
radio, had just begun, and she could hear the shuffle of feet on the
bare floor of the living room. How had she thought for one minute that
she could brave those alien eyes, intrude, uninvited, upon Pearl's
party? Hadn't Pearl made it cruelly clear that she despised her,
resented her, because of David's interest in her?
"Want to dance?"
She had been leaning over the narrow pine banister, but she straightened
then, a hand going to her heart, for it was David standing near her in
the dark, and his voice was very kind.