“But you wouldn’t dare take that boat. You might fall overboard from it. You would be lost in this fog,” Beth urged.
“I know. I wouldn’t dare now,” said the other, gloomily.
“If I hadn’t stopped you something dreadful might have happened.”
“Nothing more dreadful than will happen when we reach Marbury.”
“What do you mean?” asked the curious and sympathetic Beth.
“They know I am on this boat,” confessed the girl, with sudden desperation. “And they’ll come aboard of her and take me back.”
“Back where?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s awful! I haven’t a living soul I can call my own—not a real relative——”
“You are an orphan?” asked Beth, thinking at once of an asylum or an institution to which she supposed poor girls without parents or relatives have to go. Besides, the awful clothing this girl wore bore out this supposition of Beth’s—that she had run away from a charitable establishment of some kind.
“Of course, I’m an orphan,” said the other girl, quickly.