She turned stumblingly toward the house. Halfway there, blinded by her tears, she walked almost into Uncle Hank!
“Pettie!” he said. “Why, Pettie—it’s you?”
With the strangest movement, a perfect anguish of reluctance, the child who flew to meet him whenever she saw him coming, who ran to him with all her troubles and perplexities, approached. The poor little feet lagged at every step. Plainly they would rather have turned and fled. The eyes beseeched, apologized. The trembling hands went out and made movements of dumb entreaty. For one instant he was confused by memory of her fear of the sheriff; then, like a knife in his heart, came the clear knowledge that she was afraid—of him! For some reason beyond his understanding, she did not want to come to him. Yet come she did, and the man, moved, as it seemed to him, beyond the occasion, gathered her up in his arms, just as he had been used to do when she was six years old and went to sleep on his breast. He carried her in to the living-room, sat down on the couch there and, loosening his arm a bit so that he might look in her face, said:
“Pettie, I was scared about you, honey. Don’t you want to tell Uncle Hank? Can’t Uncle Hank help you?”
Hilda was resolute not to cry. She straightened up in the circle of his arm and lifted to him brimming eyes.
“Uncle Hank,” she began desperately, “Father’s dead—he’s gone.”
“Yes. Why, yes, dear,” said Hank gravely. “He’s been gone five year. We have to get over it when our folks die and leave us. The world wouldn’t get on without we did.”
“I know. It isn’t— What I mean is that, now he’s gone, we’re all there is left of him. We’ve got to do what he would if he was here—isn’t that so?”
“That’s so.”
“Well—he always helped people that were in trouble, didn’t he?”