Miss Cottle’s voice held a rising inflection, and Barbara murmured something vaguely acquiescent.
“Of course I couldn’t do any other way,” pursued the spinster; “having left my own nice home to come here and do for you. The butter and egg money will be mine, I suppose, and the young chickens? I couldn’t think of doing any other way than what I’ve been used to. There! I hear that boy calling you. That sort of thing will have to be broken up, right in the beginning—once you’re out of the house to stay. A great big boy like that!”
Barbara fled upstairs, the little red book in her hand, to find Jimmy, in his white night-gown, standing at the top of the stairs. She caught the child in her strong young arms, cuddling his cold little body against her breast.
“I wanted you,” grieved the child, half strangling her with his eager kisses. “Why do we have that woman, Barb’ra? I don’t like her. She took my Vallable Inf’mation book, ’n’—’n’—I scwatched her, ’n’ she slapped me. Send her away, Barb’ra; we don’t want her; do we?”
The girl wrapped a blanket warmly about the child and sat down with him in a chair by the window. The iron of her new chain bade fair to eat into her very soul as she soothed and rocked into forgetfulness of his troubles the beloved little cause of all her perplexities. Why, after all, had she done this thing? Was there not a heavier debt than could be paid in money? And was she not bankrupt still in love and peace?
In that hour of darkness all the terrifying consequences of her attempt to break away from Jarvis crowded upon her mind. Unless the person who had paid four thousand dollars for five years of her life could be induced to release her, she must indeed pay heavily for Jimmy’s inheritance. Her baffled thoughts hovered about the unknown personality of this arbiter of her future.
“To-morrow,” she thought aloud, “I shall know.”