Louise worried. She was of a keen, anxious disposition, anyway. She showed it in her face—a hatchet-face at best behind the plentiful sprinkling of freckles that adorned it. But by no means was the face unattractive.
She had had little schooling—only such as she had obtained in winter when the Nancy Hanks was frozen up near a schoolhouse. Then she studied with avidity. Had she ever remained long enough for the teachers really to get acquainted with the shy, odd child, she might have made good friends. As it was, she knew few people well and was as ignorant of life as it was lived by comfortably situated people as a civilized human being could be.
She had begun to scheme and plan for daily existence, and to keep the wolf of hunger away from the door of the canalboat cabin, when she was a very little girl—no older than Dot Kenway herself, in fact. Now she seemed quite grown up when one talked with her, despite her crass ignorance upon most subjects.
This afternoon she paddled on in her bare feet through the mire of the towpath, while the thunder storm passed over and the sun came out again. As she urged on the mules she was planning for a delight that had never yet entered into her crippled life.
She had not urged her father to stop for the farmer's potatoes, whereas on any other occasion she would have insisted upon doing so. A dollar to be earned was an important thing to Louise Quigg.
But she had two half dollars saved and hidden away in the cabin. She had squeezed the sum out of her bits of housekeeping money during the past two months. For all that time the dead walls and hoardings about Durginville had been plastered with announcements of a happening the thought of which thrilled little Louise Quigg to the very tips of her fingers and toes.
When they reached the Bumstead Lock this afternoon there was a chance for the girl to leave the mules grazing beside the towpath while the water rose slowly in the basin, and she could board the boat and talk with Cap'n Bill.
The hound, awakened by her approach, began sniffing around the edge of the forward hatch cover.
"Wonder what Beauty smells there?" Louise said idly. But her mind was on something else. The captain shook his head without much reflection and, now more thoroughly awakened, lit his pipe again.
"I say, Pap!"