THE FRECKLE-FACED GIRL
Of the two young fellows hurrying in from the boulevard one was tall
and slim and dark; the other was stocky—almost plump, in fact—and
sandy of complexion, with sharp, twinkling pond-blue eyes. Burdwell
Alling’s eyes were truly the only handsome feature he possessed. But
he had a wonderfully sweet disposition.
Darry Drew was one of those quiet, gentlemanly fellows, who seem
rather too sober for their years. Yet he possessed humor enough,
and there certainty was no primness about him. It was he who hailed
Jessie on the ground and Amy leaning out of the window above:
“I say, fellows! Have you seen a couple of young ladies around here
who have just finished their junior year at the New Melford High with
flying colors? We expected to find them sitting high and dry on the
front porch, ready to receive company.”
“Sure we did,” added Burd Alling. “They have taken the highest degree
in Prunes and Prisms and have been commended by their instructors
for excellent deportment. And among all the calicos, they are
supposed to take the bun as prudes.”
Amy actually almost fell out of the window again, and stuck out her
tongue like an impudent urchin. “A pair of smarties,” she scoffed.
“Come home and fret our ears with your college slang. How dare you!”
“I declare! Is that Miss Amy Drew?” demanded Burd, sticking a half
dollar in his eye like a monocle and apparently observing Amy for the
first time.
“It is not,” said Amy sharply. “Brush by! I don’t speak to strange
young men.”
But Darry had come to Jessie and shaken hands. If she flushed
self-consciously, it only improved her looks.
“Awfully glad to see you, Jess,” the tall young fellow said.
“It’s nice to have you home again, Darry,” she returned.
Amy ran down again then, in her usual harum-scarum fashion, and
the conversation became general. How had the girls finished their
high-school year? And how had the boys managed to stay a whole
year at Yale without being asked to leave for the good of the
undergraduate body?
Was the _Marigold_ a real yacht, or just a rowboat with a kicker
behind? And what were the girls doing in their present fetching
costumes?
“The wires!” cried Burd. “Is it a trapeze? Are we to have a summer
circus in Roselawn?”
“We shall have if you remain around here,” was Amy’s saucy reply.
“But yon is no trapeze, I’d have you know.”
“A slack wire? Who walks it—you or Jess?”
“Aw, Burd!” ejaculated Darry. “It’s radio. Don’t you recognize an
aerial when you see it?”
“You have a fine ground connection,” scoffed Burd.
“Don’t you worry about us,” Jessie took heart to say. “We know just
what to do. Go upstairs again, Amy, and haul up this end of the
contraption. I’ve got it untwisted.”
A little later, when the aerial was secure and Jessie went
practically to work affixing the ground connection, Darrington Drew
said:
“Why, I believe you girls do know what you are about.”
“Don’t you suppose we girls know anything at all, Darry?” demanded
his sister from overhead. “You boys have very little on us.”
“Don’t even want us to help you?” handsome Darry asked, grinning up
at her.
“Not unless you approach the matter with the proper spirit,” Jessie
put in. “No lofty, high-and-mighty way goes with us girls. We can be
met only on a plane of equality. But if you want to,” she added,
smiling, “you can go up to my room where Amy is and pull that rope
tauter. I admit that your masculine muscles have their uses.”
They were still having a lot of fun out of the securing of the
aerials when suddenly Burd Alling discovered a figure planted on the
gravel behind him. Hi swept off his cap in an elaborate bow, and
cried:
“We have company! Introduce me, Amy—Jess. This young lady——”
“Smarty!” croaked a hoarse voice. “I don’t want to be introduced to
nobody. I want to know if you’ve seen Bertha.”
“Big Bertha?” began Burd, who was as much determined on joking as Amy
herself.
But Jessie Norwood, her attention drawn to the freckle-faced child
who stood there so composedly, motioned Burd to halt. She approached
and in her usual kindly manner asked what the strange child wanted.
It really was difficult to look soberly at the little thing.
She might have been twelve years old, but she was so slight and
undernourished looking that it was hard to believe she had reached
that age. She had no more color than putty. And her sharp little face
was so bespatted with freckles that one could scarcely see what its
real expression was.
“Bertha who?” Jessie asked quietly. “What Bertha are you looking for?”
“Cousin Bertha. She’s an orphan like me,” said the freckled little
girl. “I ain’t got anybody that belongs to me but Bertha; and Bertha
ain’t got anybody that belongs to her but me.”
Burd and Amy were still inclined to be amused. But Darry Drew took
his cue from Jessie, if he did not find a sympathetic cord touched in
his own nature by the child’s speech and her forlorn appearance.
For she was forlorn. She wore no denim uniform, such as Amy had
mentioned on a previous occasion as being the mark of the usual
“orphan.” But it was quite plain that the freckle-faced girl had
nobody to care much for her, or about her.
“I wish you would explain a little more, dear,” said Jessie, kindly.
“Why did you come here to ask for your Cousin Bertha?”
“’Cause I’m asking at every house along this street. I told Mrs.
Foley I would, and she said I was a little fool,” and the child made
the statement quite as a matter of course.
“Who is Mrs. Foley?”
“She’s the lady I help. When Mom died Mrs. Foley lived in the next
tenement. She took me. She brought me out here to Dogtown when she
moved.”
“Why,” breathed Amy, with a shudder, “she’s one of those awful
Dogtown children.”
“Put a stopper on that, Amy!” exclaimed Darry, promptly.
But the freckle-faced girl heard her. She glared at the older
girl—the girl so much better situated than herself. Her pale eyes
snapped.
“You don’t haf to touch me,” she said sharply. “I won’t poison you.”
“Oh, Amy!” murmured her chum.
But Amy Drew was not at all bad at heart, or intentionally unkind.
She flamed redly and the tears sprang to her eyes.
“Oh! I didn’t mean—Forgive me, little girl! What is your name? I’ll
help you find your cousin.”
“My name’s Henrietta. They call me Hen. You needn’t mind gushin’ over
me. I know how you feel. I’d feel just the same if I wore your clo’es
and you wore mine.”
“By ginger!” exclaimed Burd Alling, under his breath. “There is
philosophy for you.”
But Jessie felt hurt that Amy should have spoken so thoughtlessly
about the strange child. She took Henrietta’s grimy hand and led the
freckled girl to the side steps where they could sit down.
“Now tell me about Bertha and why you are looking for her along
Bonwit Boulevard,” said Jessie.
“Do you wear these pants all the time?” asked Henrietta, suddenly,
smoothing Jessie’s overalls. “I believe I’d like to wear ’em, too.
They are something like little Billy Foley’s rompers.”
“I don’t wear them all the time,” said Jessie, patiently. “But about
Bertha?”
“She’s my cousin. She lived with us before Mom died. She went away
to work. Something happened there where she worked. I guess I don’t
know what it was. But Bertha wrote to me—I can read written letters,”
added the child proudly. “Bertha said she was coming out to see me
this week. And she didn’t come.”
“But why should you think——”
“Lemme tell you,” said Henrietta eagerly. “That woman that hired
Bertha came to Foleys day before yesterday trying to find Bertha. She
said Bertha’d run away from her. But Bertha had a right to run away.
Didn’t she?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Unless the woman had adopted her, or
something,” confessed Jessie, rather puzzled.
“Bertha wasn’t no more adopted than I am. Mrs. Foley ain’t adopted
me. I wouldn’t want to be a Foley. And if you are adopted you have to
take the name of the folks you live with. So Bertha wasn’t adopted,
and she had a right to run away. But she didn’t get to Dogtown.”
“But you think she might have come this way?”
“Yep. She’s never been to see me since we moved to Dogtown. So she
maybe lost her way. Or she saw that woman and was scared. I’m looking
to see if anybody seen her,” said the child, getting up briskly. “I
guess you folks ain’t, has you?”
“I am afraid not,” said Jessie thoughtfully. “But we will be on the
lookout for her, honey. You can come back again and ask me any time
you like.”
The freckle-faced child looked her over curiously. “What do you say
that for?” she demanded. “You don’t like me. I ain’t pretty. And
you’re pretty—and that other girl,” (she said this rather grudgingly)
“even if you do wear overalls.”
“Why! I want to help you,” said Jessie, somewhat startled by the
strange girl’s downright way of speaking.
“You got a job for me up here?” asked Henrietta promptly. “I guess
I’d rather work for you than for the Foleys.”
“Don’t the Foleys treat you kindly?” Amy ventured, really feeling an
interest in the strange child.
“Guess she treats me as kind as a lady can when she’s got six kids
and a man that drinks,” Henrietta said with weariness. “But I’d like
to wear better clo’es. I wouldn’t mind even wearing them overall
things while I worked if I had better to wear other times.”
She looked down at her faded gingham, the patched stockings, the
broken shoes. She wore no hat. Really, she was a miserable-looking
little thing, and the four more fortunate young people all considered
this fact silently as Henrietta moved slowly away and went down the
path to the street.
“Come and see me again, Henrietta!” Jessie called after her.
The freckled child nodded. But she did not look around. Darry said
rather soberly:
“Too bad about the kid. We ought to do something for her.”
“To begin with, a good, soapy bath,” said his sister, vigorously, but
not unkindly.
“She’s the limit,” chuckled Burd. “Hen is some bird, I’ll say!”
“I wonder——” began Jessie, but Amy broke in with:
“To think of her hunting up and down the boulevard for her cousin.
And she didn’t even tell us what Bertha looked like or how old she
is, or anything. My!”
“I wonder if we ought not to have asked her for more particulars,”
murmured Jessie. “It is strange we should hear of another girl that
had run away——”
But the others paid no attention at the moment to what Jessie was
saying. It was plain that Amy did not at all comprehend what her chum
considered. The lively one had forgotten altogether about the unknown
girl she and Jessie had seen borne away in the big French car.