“Records can lie,” he declared, brutally. “You don’t look eighteen, Jessie Gordon, and I don’t believe you are. It’s a likely story, ain’t it now, that you should happen to be of age on the very day, almost, that it’s a matter of life or death, as one might say, that you should be! No, that’s too thin; it won’t wash. You’ve made a little mistake in your entry, that’s all. One of them convenient mistakes that folks are apt to make when it’s to their interest to do so.”
“As there is no man here to kick you out of the house, I suppose you feel at liberty to say whatever comes into your wicked head, and we must bear it!” Jessie said, her voice shaken with anger.
In spite of himself, Mr. Horton winced at that. “I ain’t one to take advantage of your being helpless,” he declared, virtuously. “You’ve no call to hint as much. But you know as well as I do that you don’t look a day over sixteen, if you do that, and you couldn’t make nobody—no land agent—believe that you are of age, if you didn’t have that record to swear by.”
“As we do have it, it will probably answer our purpose.”
“Oh, well; maybe ’twill; maybe ’twill!” his glance ranged up and down the window, where lay the book with its irrefutable evidence. Then his eyes fell, and his tones changed to blandness once more. “I must be going,” he announced, edging toward the door; “I was passing along, and an idee popped into my head. You’ve been to some expense in helping to find your pa’s body—though why you should ’a’ been so set on finding it, nobody knows; folks is so cur’ous, that way! If it had been my case, I reckon my folks would ’a’ had sense enough to leave me where I was—”
“I am sure they would—gladly!” I interposed, quickly.
Mr. Horton shot an evil glance in my direction, and went on: “Well, you’ve been to some expense, and the mines have shut down so’s ’t that old crackerjack of a nigger that hangs ’round your place is out of work. I’m going to pre-empt this place—none o’ your slack-twisted homestead rights for me—and I thought it would be neighborly if I was to step in and tell you, Jess, that my wife’s wanting a hired girl. She was speaking of it last night, and the thought came into my head right off, though I didn’t mention it to her, that you was going to need a home, and there was your chance. Being so young and inexperienced—for you don’t look eighteen, no—I reckon you’d be willing to work without any more wages than jest your board and lodging until you had kind o’ got trained into doing things our way.”
“I’m afraid that I should never earn any wages at anything—not if I were to live a thousand years, if I had to be trained to do things your way first!” Jessie told him, with flashing eyes.
“Oh, that’s all right; you’ll get over some of your high notions when you get to be a hired girl. You’ll prob’ly acquire the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, same’s the Bible speaks of, and it’s one that you ain’t got at present. As for you”—he turned on me savagely, and it was evident that he held me in even less esteem than he did my sister—“you can get out, and that brat”—he glared at Ralph, who had drawn near, and was regarding him with a kind of solemn, impersonal interest—“you can get shet of him easy enough—you can send him to the poor-house.”