Part 17

Setting the lamp down upon the improvised table, she threw open one of the shutters to let in a breath of fresh air, and as she did so the room was filled with the roar and dust of the elevated train which passed so close to our windows, and after it came a cold draft of air caused by the suction of the cars. Henrietta closed the window and returned to the table.

Then I answered her question: "Well, that depends upon what you mean by gentleman-friend," I said.

"I mean just what I said," replied Henrietta, sliding an egg upon her plate and passing the remaining one to me. "I mean a special gentleman-friend."

"Well, no; I guess I haven't. I used to know lots of boys in the country where I lived, but there isn't one of them I could call my special gentleman-friend, and I don't know any men here." I uttered this speech carefully, so as not to imply any criticism of Henrietta's use of the expression "gentleman-friend," nor to call down upon my own head her criticism for using any other than the box-factory vernacular in discussing these delicate amatory affairs.

"Oh, go and tell that to your grandmother!" she retorted, with a sly little laugh. "Don't none of the girls there have gentlemen-friends, or is farmers so different that they never stand gentlemen-friends to them?"

"Oh, dear me, yes!" I answered hastily, trying to avoid the unpleasant double entendre, and choosing to accept it in its strictly explicit phase. "Why, certainly, the girls get married there every day. There are hardly any old maids in my part of the country. They get engaged almost as soon as they are out of short dresses, and the first thing you know, they are married and raising families." Then I added, "but have you got a gentleman-friend yourself?"

"Yep," she answered, nodding and pouring out the coffee; "I have a very particular gentleman-friend what's been keeping company with me for nearly a year, off and on."

"Oh!" I cried, eager to turn the conversation toward Henrietta's personal affairs instead of my own, which I felt she completely misconstrued. "Do tell me about him; what is his name--and are you engaged to him yet?"

"My! ain't you fresh, though?" she said; but there was cordiality in the rebuff. "I met him at the mission where I teach Sundays," she went on. "He's brother Mason, and he's the Sunday-school superintendent. He give me all that perfume on the mantel," and she pointed a dripping knife toward the row of empty bottles.

"Why, is he in the perfumery business?" I asked innocently, my eyes ranging over the heterogeneous collection on the mantel. Henrietta took the remark as exceedingly funny, for she immediately fell into a paroxysm of tittering, choking over a mouthful of food before she could attain gravity enough to answer.

"Lord! no; you do ask the funniest questions!"

Thus checked, I did not press for further information as to brother Mason's vocation, but proceeded to satisfy my hunger, which was not diminished by the unappetizing appearance of the food on the barrel.

It was a matter of great surprise to me to see how little Henrietta ate, and I was likewise ashamed of my own voracious appetite. Henrietta noticed this and frowned ominously.

"God! but you do eat!" she commented frankly, poising her knife in air.

"I'm hungry. I've worked hard to-day," I replied with dignity.

"Maybe you won't eat so much, though, after a while," she said hopefully.

"Maybe not," I agreed. "But you, Henrietta--you are not eating anything!"

"Me? Oh, I'm all right. I'm eating as much as I ever do. The works takes away my hunger. If it didn't, I don't know how I'd get along. If I eat as much as you, I'd be likely to starve to death. I couldn't make enough to feed me. When I first begun to work in the factory I'd eat three or four pieces of bread across the loaf, and potatoes and meat, and be hungry for things besides; but after a while you get used to being hungry for so long, you couldn't eat if you had it to eat."

"How long have you been working?" I ventured.

Henrietta put her cup on the table and shot a suspicious glance at me before she answered:

"Oh, off and on, and for five or six years, ever since my uncle died. He was my guardian--that's his house up there."

I looked in the direction of Henrietta's pointed finger to a cheap chromolithograph that was tacked on the wall between the windows and immediately over the barrel where we were eating. I recognized it at once as a reproduction of a familiar scene showing a castle on the Rhine. I had seen the same picture many times, once as a supplement with a Sunday newspaper. That this stately pile of green and yellow variegated stones should be the residence of Henrietta's uncle and guardian seemed obviously but a bit of girlish fun, of a piece with her earlier talk regarding her aristocratic ancestry; for by this time I had construed that strange story into a hoax that was never meant to be taken seriously.

But one glance now at Henrietta's face showed me my mistake. It was plainly to be seen that she had come to believe every word of what she had told me.

My eye had traveled to the row of garments on the pegs behind the door and had rested with curiosity upon a "lassie" bonnet and cloak. Henrietta did not wait for the question on my lips.

"Them's my adjutant's uniform," she said, with a touch of pride. "You didn't know I used to be an adjutant in the Salvation Army, did you?"

I shook my head.

"Well, I was, all right. Adjutant Faith Manners, that's what I was," and rising, she limped across the floor, and burrowing in the depths of the trunk, returned in a moment with an envelop which she handed me with the command to read its contents. The envelop, postmarked "Pittsburg, Pa.," was addressed to Adjutant Faith Manners.

"But how does it come you have two names?" I inquired.