“Haven’t you anybody of your own?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My mother and father both died when I was a little bit of a girl.” Then with a piteous little cry, “I don’t see why my mother couldn’t have lived or I have died, too!” and overcome with a mingling of weariness, nervous excitement, and emotion, Posey dropped down beside her bundle, and hiding her face in it burst into a passion of sobs.
“There, there,” and as he spoke there was a shake in his own voice, and a moisture in his own eyes. “Don’t cry so, don’t. I’m awfully sorry for you. I’ve lost my father and mother, too, and I know how tough it is on a fellow, though Uncle John and everybody have been good to me.”
By this time Posey had succeeded in checking her sobs, and in answer to his questions she poured out her whole story, ending with her flight. “You’re a regular brick,” he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm as she finished, “to start off that way, alone in the night. I’d like to see my cousin Emma or Fannie doing anything of that sort, and they both bigger than you are; but my, they hardly dare to look out of doors alone after it comes dark! Won’t I have something to tell them, though, when I go home? And I don’t blame you for running away, either, though to be sure,” he added impartially, “it might have been better if you had kept out of a row.”
“Yes, it would,” Posey admitted meekly.
“But now that you have done it,” he asked in a practical tone, and with a business-like clearness, “what are you going to do?”
“I—I don’t know,” answered Posey, realizing suddenly and with confusion, how very vague her ideas were, and what a wild undertaking hers was. “I didn’t know—I thought—I hoped—that I might find somebody—somewhere, who would let me live with them. I can wash dishes, and iron, and sweep, and churn, and bake apple pies and ginger-cake—Mrs. Hagood taught me—and do lots of things about the house,” sadly feeling that her list was after all but a short one. “I would try so hard to suit. Don’t you think I could find such a place?” and she looked in his face appealingly.
“I should think so,” he answered after a moment’s pause. For with all his boyishness there was about him a certain thoughtfulness and readiness of decision, which led Posey to regard him with an instinctive trust and reliance. “At any rate,” he added, “you might try; I don’t think of anything better just now that you could do.”
All this time there had been a frequent splashing and stamping down below them in the creek, and several times the boy had looked over the side of the bridge to call, “Whoa, there, whoa,” or “Stand steady, Billy.” “Let’s see,” he went on, “you’re about eight miles from Horsham now,—you must have clipped it pretty lively, but you look awful tuckered, and I don’t believe you could make another eight miles.”
“I—I’m afraid not,” Posey sadly agreed, for having once stopped it seemed to her that she never could start on again.