Part 26

"I can't," replied the head.

"But I want you."

The head wagged dolefully.

"Why not?"

The head hung down.

"Tell me."

The head's negative was sorrowful but determined.

"If you don't tell me I'll--never speak to you again 's long as I live, Jack Cody!"

The head stretched out its long neck and sent an agonized glance toward her.

"Tell me--right now!" she commanded.

"Well--she's took my clothes with her," wailed the head, and jerked itself within, while the door was slammed behind it.

Split walked up the stoop.

"Jack," she called, her mouth at the keyhole, "who took 'em? Your mother? Why? But she can't keep you in that way. Never mind. What have you got on?"

The door was opened an inch or two, and the head started to look out. But at sight of Split so near it withdrew in such turtle-like alarm that she laughed aloud.

"What're you laughing at?" growled the boy.

"What's that you got on?" said she.

"My--my mother's wrapper."

A peal of laughter burst from the Indian princess. But it ceased suddenly. For the door was thrown open with such violence that it made Jane Cody's wax flowers shake apprehensively under their glass bell, and a figure stalked out such as might haunt a dream--long, gaunt, awkward, inescapably boyish, yet absurdly feminine, now that the dark calico wrapper flapped at its big, awkward heels and bound and hindered its long legs.

Split looked from the heavily shod feet to the round, short-shaven black head, and a premonitory giggle shook her.

"Don't you laugh--don't you dare laugh at me! Don't you, Split--will you?" The phrases burst from him, a threat at the beginning, an appeal at the end.

"No," said Split, choking a bit; "no, I won't. You don't look very--" she gulped--"very funny, Jack. And it's getting so dark that nobody'd know--really they wouldn't."

"Sure?"

Split nodded.

"Get your sled quick, the big, long one, the leg-breaker, and take me down--I'll tell you where. Get it, won't you?"

"In this, this--like this?" Jack faltered.

"It's so important, Jack. Please! It's always you that asks me, remember."

The boy threw his hands out with a gesture that strained the narrow garment he wore almost to bursting. He began to talk, to argue, to plead; then suddenly he yielded, and turned and ran, a grotesque, long-legged shape, toward the back of the house.

When he whistled, Split joined him, and together they plowed their way through the high snow to the beaten-down street beyond. At the top of the hill, Split sat down well to the front of the low, rakish-looking leg-breaker. Behind her the boy, hitching up his skirts, threw himself with one knee bent beneath him, and, with a skilful ruddering of the other long, untrousered leg, started the sled.