"I know how! I know how! You have been—you can find the way—you must help me back to Baltimore, to my folks, to these Kidder-Kiddery men that offer all that money. I never heard of them. I can't imagine why they want to pay so many good dollars for a girl, just a girl they can't even know. I wouldn't trust them. I wouldn't go into anybody's 'office' again for all the world. But you take me, show me the way to the city and I'll show you the way to Baltimore Street. I know it. I know it quite well. I've been there on a street car. Then I'll stand outside while you go in and ask for the money. If they won't give it to you, bring them to the street and show them—ME! I ought to call myself in capital letters, same as I'm printed there, if I'm so expensive as that! Think of it, Jim Barlow! If you get that five hundred dollars you can live somewhere else and study all the time and go to college and be President, just exactly as I told you! Oh! Oh! O—Oh! Let's start now, this minute! I can't wait, I cannot!"
Jim listened intently. With a slowly growing wonder and delight on his homely features, with a widening of his blue eyes, and—at last with a burst of tears. He was ashamed of them, instantly, but he couldn't have helped shedding them at that supreme moment any more than he could have helped breathing. It was as if the girl's words had opened wide the gates of Paradise—the Paradise of Knowledge—and let him look within.
Then the cottage door opened and Miranda Stott looked forth. The sight of her restored him to the present and the practical side of life. The five hundred dollars wouldn't be his, of course. That notion of Dorothy's was as wild as—as the flight of that chicken-hawk sailing over the barnyard. Nor could he start at once, as she demanded. He had lived here for years and he still owed his employer allegiance—to a certain extent. Less than ever would he leave her alone with all this farm work on hand as well as a sick son. He must find somebody to take his place. Then he would help Dorothy back to town, but they'd have to be careful.
Dorothy, also, had seen Mrs. Stott at the door, but now had a strange indifference to her. How could anybody hurt a girl who was worth five hundred dollars to somebody? She stopped Jim as he was moving away and demanded:
"Are you ready? Can we start now—when she's shut the door?"
"Not yet."
Her face saddened and he hastened to add:
"S-ssh! Don't say nothin'. We'll go. I've got to think it over—how. An' to hunt somebody to work. But—we'll go—we'll go!"
He hastily turned away from the sight of her reproachful eyes nor did he blame her for the angry: "You mean boy!" which she hurled after him as he went into the house. But he made a chance soon to talk with her, unheard by Miranda, and to lay his plans before her.
"I know a feller'll come, I guess. He was in the county-farm an' jobs round, somewheres. He don't live nowheres. I seen him loafin' round them woods, yonder, yesterday, an' I'll try find him. If I do I'll coax him to stay an' help whilst I'm gone. Noonin' I'll leave you get the grub, whilst I seek him. Go 'long, just's if nothin' was different an' I'll help you."