Part 17

Suddenly she ran to him, still keeping her hand out-stretched until it touched his own.

"How did you know me?" he said.

"Know you!" was all the answer she made to that question. "Come into the house. I've got some coffee on the stove for you. I've been up and down the street waiting for you ever since it began to get light."

"Your grandfather won't--"

"He's at Uncle Jonas's; he won't be back till noon. There's no one here."

She led him to the front-door, where he stamped and shook himself; he was snow from head to foot.

"I'm running away from the good Gomorrah," he said, "but I've stopped to look back, and I'm a pretty white pillar."

"I know where you stopped to look back," she answered, brushing him heartily with her red hands. "You came in the alley way. It was Mamie's window."

He did not reply, and the only visible token that he had any consciousness of this clairvoyance of hers was a slight lift of his higher eyebrow. She wasted no time in getting him to the kitchen, where, when she had removed his overcoat, she placed him in a chair, unwound the comforter, and, as carefully as a nurse, lifted the cap from his injured head. When the strip of towel was disclosed she stood quite still for a moment with the cap in her hand; then with a broken little cry she stooped and kissed a lock of his hair, which escaped, discolored, beneath the bandage.

"Stop that!" he commanded, horribly embarrassed.

"Oh, Joe," she cried, "I knew! I knew it was there--but to SEE it! And it's my fault for leaving you--I HAD to go or I wouldn't have--I--"

"Where'd you hear about it?" he asked, shortly.

"I haven't been to bed," she answered. "Grandfather and I were up all night at Uncle Jonas's, and Colonel Flitcroft came about two o'clock, and he told us."

"Did he tell you about Norbert?"

"Yes--a great deal." She poured coffee into a cup from a pot on the stove, brought it to him, then placing some thin slices of bread upon a gridiron, began to toast them over the hot coals. "The Colonel said that Norbert thought he wouldn't get well," she concluded; "and Mr. Arp said Norbert was the kind that never die, and they had quite an argument."

"What were you doing at Jonas Tabor's?" asked Joe, drinking his coffee with a brightening eye.

"We were sent for," she answered.

"What for?"

She toasted the bread attentively without replying, and when she decided that it was brown enough, piled it on a warm plate. This she brought to him, and kneeling in front of him, her elbow on his knee, offered for his consideration, looking steadfastly up at his eyes. He began to eat ravenously.

"What for?" he repeated. "I didn't suppose Jonas would let you come in his house. Was he sick?"

"Joe," she said, quietly, disregarding his questions---"Joe, have you GOT to run away?"

"Yes, I've got to," he answered.

"Would you have to go to prison if you stayed?" She asked this with a breathless tensity.

"I'm not going to beg father to help me out," he said, determinedly. "He said he wouldn't, and he'll be spared the chance. He won't mind that; nobody will care! Nobody! What does anybody care what I do!"

"Now you're thinking of Mamie!" she cried. "I can always tell. Whenever you don't talk naturally you're thinking of her!"

He poured down the last of the coffee, growing red to the tips of his ears. "Ariel," he said, "if I ever come back--"

"Wait," she interrupted. "Would you have to go to prison right away if they caught you?"

"Oh, it isn't that," he laughed, sadly. "But I'm going to clear out. I'm not going to take any chances. I want to see other parts of the world, other kinds of people. I might have gone, anyhow, soon, even if it hadn't been for last night. Don't you ever feel that way?"