THE OTHER VOICE
“What do you mean, hide in Kelly’s barn?” Pepsy whispered, greatly
agitated.
“Can you keep still about it?” Pee-wee said. “Girls can’t keep secrets.
Can you keep still till I tell you it’s all right to speak?”
“I can keep a secret and not even tell it to you,” she shot back at him
in spirited defiance. “I know a secret that will—that will—help us
_sure_ to make lots and lots of money. And I wouldn’t even tell you or
Aunt Jamsiah, because she tried to make me. So _there_, Mr. Smarty. And
I don’t care whether you tell me or not if I can’t keep a secret, but
I’ve got a secret all by myself and it’s that much bigger than yours,”
she said, spreading out her thin, little arms to include a vast area.
“And besides that, I _hate_ you,” she added, bursting into tears and
starting for the house. “And you can have that girl who was kept in
after school for a partner,” he heard her sobbing as she crossed the
yard.
Pepsy did not pause to speak with Uncle Eb and Aunt Jamsiah who were
sitting in the kitchen, but the latter, seeing her in tears, said
kindly, “No folks passed by to the carnival to-night, Pepsy?”
“Looks like rain,” Uncle Eb said consolingly; “to-morrer’ll be the big
night when they have the wrestlin’ match. I reckon Jeb Collard n’ all
his summer folks will go up on th’ hay-rig from West Baxter. You wait
till to-morrer night, Pep. Mamsy’ll make you up a pan of fresh doughnuts
fer to-morrer night, won’t you, Mamsy? Don’t you take on now, Pepsy
girl; you jes’ go ter bed n’ ferget yer troubles.”
“I don’t care about people from West Baxter,” Pepsy said, stamping her
foot and shaking her head violently, “and I don’t care about the old
carnival or anything—so _now_. They’re all too stingy—to—to—buy
things—they’re too _stingy_. I—I—I—don’t care,” she went on fairly in
hysterics, “he says I can’t—I can’t—keep—keep—a secret—but I’ve got one
and I won’t tell it to anybody and I thought it up all myself and it
will _surely_ make lots and lots and lots of people come and buy—and—and
he’ll see if girls can do things.” She was crying violently and shaking
like a leaf.
“What is the secret, Pepsy?” Aunt Jamsiah asked gently; “maybe I can
help you.”
“I won’t tell—I won’t tell _anybody_,” Pepsy sobbed.
They were accustomed to these outbursts of her tense little nature and
said no more.
Pepsy went up to her little room under the eaves, catching each breath
and trembling. No wonder they had not understood her at that big brick
orphan home. No wonder she had hated it. Little as she was, she was too
big for it.
She was in a mood to torment herself that night and she lay awake to
listen for that dread voice from across the woods. She lay on her left
side so they would have good luck next day. She was greatly overwrought
and when at last she did hear the sound, loud and heartless with its
sudden beginning and sudden end, it startled and terrorized her as if it
were indeed that gloomy, windowless equipage of the State Orphan Home,
coming to take her away.
She pushed her little fingers into her ears so that she could not hear
it....