“I’m real glad to see you,” she said, “I didn’t pay you yet for yesterday. Mr. Bryant said I ought to have asked you if you had a place to stay all night. He said we owed you a great deal and he left this ten dollar bill for you. He said it was worth a good many times that what you did, carrying that broiler out of the house. You see it’s all wood ceiling up behind that range, and if it had caught fire the house would like as not have gone. You know I had some dish towels hanging up on that little line to dry, and two of them were scorched. I found that out this morning. It wouldn’t have been but a minute more till the whole would have been in a flame, and then the wall would have caught. And Mr. Bryant hadn’t renewed the insurance. The time was up day before yesterday, and he had been busy and had just let it slip by without realizing till this stirred him up. So he appreciates what you did.”
“Oh, that was quite all right, Mrs. Bryant. I didn’t want to be paid for what I did yesterday. It was I who distracted your attention and made you forget your meat, and I wanted to make up for it. I couldn’t think of taking so much anyway. I just helped you out when you were in a hurry. Anybody would have done that. And I’m sure you helped me out. I came in to pay my first month’s rent,” and she laid a five dollar bill down on the table.
“Well, I’ll take that,” said Mrs. Bryant, “but you’ve got to keep the ten. My husband put his foot down. Five is for getting the supper, and five is for saving the house. It really isn’t much you know when you stop to consider it. Why we’d have lost everything. Now, is there anything I can do to help you? When do you move in? Want to borrow anything?”
“Why, perhaps I may need something by and by, but I’m all right so far,” said Joyce ignoring the question about moving in. “I’m wondering if I can get some water now and then at that outside faucet?”
“Why, sure, get all the water you want. It’s right handy for you, and there’s a drain out by the back door you can use too, or you can throw your dish water into the garden. Here, I’ll show you—” and she whisked outside and made Joyce acquainted with all the ins and outs of the kitchen shed.
“I don’t mind a bit if you come and wash out your clothes in these tubs,” she added thoughtfully. “You can’t do much washing out there in that little tucked-up place. Besides, you’d have to carry so much water. Better just bring anything you want to wash in here and rub it out. There’s the wire clothes line outside, and you can fix it to wash on the days when I don’t so we won’t interfere. How’d you ever come to buy that little shack anyway? Some agent sell it to you?”
“Why, no,” said Joyce smiling frankly, “I just saw it as I passed by and it appealed to me. A man was knocking it to pieces. I got there just as he struck the first blow and it shivered like a person, such a pretty little house! I needed a house myself and I asked if I could buy it. They said it had to be taken away at once and finally they agreed to sell it if I took it away in an hour.”
“H’m!” said Mrs. Bryant eyeing her thoughtfully, “You were hunting a house were you. Where’d you come from? How’d you happen to come to our town?”
Joyce smiled:
“I just walked till I came to it I guess. You see my aunt died with whom I have lived since my parent’s death, and I felt as if I could go on living better if I tried a new place, it wouldn’t seem so sad, so when I reached this region I just took a trolley and rode till things looked interesting and then I got off and walked till I came on the little house.”