“Well, if it’s funny, out with it, but if it isn’t—”
“It’s kind o’ funny that I should be tellin’ at all.”
“To me, you mean?”
“Yes!”
“That’s easy. You trust me; that’s the reason,” he explained jocularly.
“Do I? How do you know?”
“Oh, I’m a wise old know-it-all. Which is certainly a nice bunch of conceit, isn’t it?”
“No,” she denied good-humoredly.
Without pretense of any sort, and completely at her ease sitting there on the couch only a yard or two from him, she gave Nielsen a few points in her knowledge of past years. Briefly, she laid claim to having lived nearly all her life with adopted parents, from whom, thanks to their continued selfishness and maltreatment, she had run away about a year ago. These people had once informed her that her father had married some woman of position in Bohemia, where Erna was born, and that, having squandered her money, he had disappeared for good. Her mother had died in giving birth to her, and her adopted parents, related to him as cousins, had received her indirectly through some friends of her father’s, as well as money, through various mysterious channels, up to her sixth year. The remittances stopped suddenly, and she was left a beggar on their hands, a fact of which they were often careful to remind her. At the age of twelve or thirteen, Erna had hunted for and found a situation, and later others, and had been able to pay some sort of board through the intervening years. But her “parents,” who had five children of their own, despised her and maltreated her accordingly, as did the children, guided by the elders’ precepts. Only her strength of body and endowed pugnaciousness had saved her from greater maltreatment.
“And this you call a funny story?” demanded Nielsen, stopping her.