Part 59

"That sounds all right, but it isn't. What's he going to do when he's old?"

"He ain't ever going to grow old. He said so, and if you'd see him you'd know."

Jane felt within her the stirring of curiosity. But she put it down sternly. She had no time for it.

"Tommy," she said, "I've been thinking. I've got to earn more money, and I want your help."

Tommy's faithful eyes held a look of doglike affection.

"Oh, if I can--" he quavered.

"I've got to get ahead." Jane was breathless. Her eyes shone.

"I've got to get ahead, Tommy. I can't live all my life like this." She held up the pink strip. "Even if I am a woman, there ought to be something more than making rompers for the rest of my days."

"You might," said the infatuated Tommy, "marry."

"Marry? Marry whom?"

Tommy wished that he might shout "Me!" from the housetops. But he knew the futility of it.

"I shall never marry," she said, "until I find somebody different from anything I've ever seen."

Jane's ideas of men were bounded largely by the weakness of her father and the crudeness of men like Henry Bittinger, Atwood Jones and others of their kind. She didn't consider Tommy at all. He was a nice boy and a faithful friend. His mother, too, was a faithful friend. She classed them together.

Her plan, told with much coming and going of lovely color, was this: She had read that the way to make money was to find the thing that a community lacked and supply it. Considering it seriously she had decided that in Tinkersfield there was need of good food.

"There's just one horrid little eating house," she told Tommy, "when the men come in from out of town."

"Nothing fit to eat either," Tommy agreed; "and they make up on booze."

She nodded. "Tommy," she said, and leaned toward him, "I had thought of sandwiches--home-made bread and slices of ham--wrapped in waxed paper; and of taking them down and selling them in front of the post-office on Saturday nights."

Tommy's eyes bulged. "You take them down?"

"Why not? Any work is honorable, Tommy."

Tommy felt that it wouldn't be a goddess role.

"I can't see it." The red crept up into his honest freckled face. "You know the kind of women that's round on Saturday nights."

"I am not that kind of woman." She was suddenly austere.

He found himself stammering. "I didn't mean--"

"Of course you didn't. But it's a good plan, Tommy. Say you think it's a good plan."

He would have said anything to please her. "Well, you might try."

The next day he found himself talking it over with O-liver. "She wants to sell them on Saturday nights."

"Tell her," said O-liver, "to stay at home."

"But she's got to have some money."