"I didn't touch it with my hands," he assured her.
Bob's face was shining from a vigorous scrubbing and his hair was plastered tight to his head and still wet. He had so evidently tried to make himself neat and his poor frayed overalls and ridiculous shoes made the task so hopeless that Betty was divided between pity for him and anger at the Peabodys who could treat a member of their household so shabbily.
"I guess you kind of shook the old man up," commented Bob, unconscious of her thoughts. "For half a minute after you slammed the door, he sat there in a daze. Mrs. Peabody wanted to take some supper up to you, but he wouldn't let her. She's deathly afraid of him."
"Did he ever hit her?" asked Betty, horrified.
"No, I don't know that he ever did. He doesn't have to hit her; his talk is worse. They say she used to answer back, but I never heard her open her mouth to argue with him, and I've been here three years."
"Do they pay you well?"
The boy looked at Betty sharply.
"I thought you were kidding," he said frankly. "Poorhouse children don't get paid. We get our board till we're eighteen. We're not supposed to do enough work to cover more'n that. Just the same, I do as much as Wapley or Leison, any day."
Betty walked along eating her bread and wondering about Bob Henderson. Who, she speculated, had been his father and mother, and how had he happened to find himself in the poorhouse? And why, oh, why, should such a boy have had the bad luck to be "taken" by a man like Mr. Peabody? Betty was a courteous girl, and she could not bring herself to ask Bob these questions pointblank, however her curiosity urged her. Perhaps when they were better acquainted, she might have a chance. But that thought suggested to Betty her letter.