“About me?” David pretended surprise. “Is that all, Sally? Well, I’ll go on up to my room and study awhile, if I can stay awake.”
“You’re going to dance with me—with us,” Pearl wailed, her flat voice harsh with disappointment. “I told Ross Willis to bring another partner for himself, because I was counting on you—”
“Awfully sorry, but I’ve got to study. I thought I told you at supper that I had to study,” David reminded her mildly, but there was the steel of determination in his casual voice.
Pearl flung out of the room then, her face twisted with the first grimaces of crying.
“We’d better wash out and rinse these dish cloths,” David said imperturbably, but his gold-flecked eyes and his strong, characterful mouth smiled at Sally. “My mother taught me that—and a good many other things.”
A little later, under cover of the swishing of water in the granite dish pan, David spoke in a low voice to the girl who worked so happily at his side:
“Take it as easy as you can. They’ll work you to death if you let them. And—if you need any help, day or night,” he emphasized the words significantly, so that once again a pulse of fear throbbed in Sally’s throat, “just call on me. Remember, I’m an orphan myself. But it’s easier for a boy. The world can be mighty hard on a girl alone.”
“Thank you,” Sally trembled, her voice scarcely a whisper, for Mrs. Carson was moving heavily in the pantry nearby.
Fifteen minutes later, as Sally was sweeping the big kitchen, shouts of laughter and loud, gay words told her that the party of farm girls and boys had arrived. With David gone to his garret room to study, Sally suddenly felt very small and forlorn, very much what he had called her—a girl alone.
The sounds of boisterous gayety penetrated to every corner of the small house, but they echoed most loudly in Sally’s heart. For she was sixteen with all the desires and dreams of any other girl of sixteen. And she loved parties, although she had never been to a small, intimate one in a private home in all her life.