“Well, if you’ve done talking, get the leather piece and wrap this work up. If you hurry you’ll get there in time and since you’ve wasted all them flowers you’d better step lively. There’s just one half-loaf in this cupboard and you’re amazing hungry—for such as you.”
“Yes’m. You help, Jessie, please,” cried Sophy; and then, as if inspired by some wonderful idea, raised herself from the floor where she was spreading the piece of carriage-cloth used to enwrap the heavy overalls on their journeys to and from “the shop,” and exclaimed: “Oh! let’s do it! Let’s ask that nice driver to carry us ’round by the factory on our way to Washington Square and carry the bundle with us. Won’t that be grand?”
Jessica hesitated. She feared she was already doing something her guardian would disapprove, yet otherwise felt no sense of guilt. But instantly her hesitation vanished, remembering that she had forewarned Mrs. Dalrymple that there might be times when she could not be obedient, when her own sense of what was right—for herself—interfered with Madam’s judgment. This was one of the times! She was sure of it.
Ephraim had nearly “lost his head” in his anxiety, tied to his waiting outside with the two horses which he could neither leave nor lose; and his patience entirely gave way when the two girls reappeared, tugging a mighty bundle between them, Jessica tripping in her unfamiliar skirt, but Sophy radiant in her rags and in the prospect of another ride.
What the driver felt was best expressed by the fierce glance he shot the sharpshooter, with whom he had had a most enjoyable talk during their long wait, and by his words:
“I look to you, sir, for payment for all this nonsense!”
The effect of this was to turn Ephraim’s wrath from his “Little Captain” upon the city jehu, and to make him retort, savagely:
“Plague take your cautious soul! You shall be paid and double paid and don’t you forget it.”
An hour later there entered the aristocratic but now most anxious presence of Madam Dalrymple, two brightly smiling girls, chattering in the friendliest manner, and one of them explaining:
“I’m sorry, Cousin Margaret, that Buster ran away, and yet I’m not sorry only for fear you didn’t like it. This is Sophy Nestor and she lives on Avenue A. I’ve been to see where she lives, after Buster knocked her down, and now she’s come to see us, and I’m going up to get one of my frocks to give her, ’cause she hasn’t any whole one. And please, will you give me five dollars to pay the hackman? And for fifty cents more he’d carry her back again.”