“Well,” concluded Barnabetta, roughly, “you can’t be any good here.”
“I know I can’t. But I believe I can help you just the same.”
“Don’t want your help,” growled the circus girl.
“Oh! don’t say that,” begged the Corner House girl. “I can go to Mr. Bob Buckham and get his carriage and horses—”
“We haven’t got any money to pay for a carriage,” said Barnabetta, quickly.
“You won’t have to pay Mr. Buckham for doing an act of Christian charity,” declared Agnes, and she set off immediately, Tom Jonah following closely at her heels.
Barnabetta did not even bid her good-bye. She was all solicitude for her father’s hurt ankle, and was now kneeling by him, packing the snow about the swelling foot. But she was “as hard as nails” toward the Corner House girl.
Agnes hurried right down to the railroad and walked without molestation to the crossing she had spoken of. There, up the snowy lane, she obtained her first glimpse of Mr. Bob Buckham’s house.
She had come a roundabout way to it, indeed. It was now long past noon and she had missed her dinner. Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Buckham had ceased expecting her long ago.
The big girl who worked in Mrs. Buckham’s kitchen—Posey by name and an autocrat to a degree—met Agnes with a cheerful greeting, but refused admission to Tom Jonah.