"Would you like a little more?" asked Gertrude, smiling.
Ettie shivered, and closed her eyes.
"No; I don't like it. I guess it ain't polite to say so, but—Oh, of course maybe I'd like it if I was well, but it made me sick that time, an' so I don't like it now when I am sick." She laughed in a childish way, and then she drew Gertrude's face down near her own. "Say, I'll tell you the solemn truth. It made me tight that day. He told me so afterwards, n' I guess it did."
Here was a revelation, indeed. Gertrude stroked the fluffy hair, gently. She was trying to think of just the right thing to say. It was growing dark in the room. Ettie reached up again and drew Gertrude's face down. "Say," she whispered, "you won't be mad at me for that, will you? He told me I wasn't to blab to anybody; but it always seems as if you wouldn't be mad at me, and"—she began to weep again.
"Don't cry," said Gertrude, again, gently. "Of course I am not angry with you. I am sorry it happened, but—Ettie, who is he?" Ettie sobbed on, and held her arms close about Gertrude's neck. Again the older girl said, with lips close to the child's ear:
"Don't you think it would be better to tell me who 'he' is? Is he so young as to not know better than to advise you that way, dear?"
"He's forty," sobbed Ettie, "an' he's rich, an' he's got a girl of his own as big as me. I saw her one day in the store. He's the cashier."
Gertrude shivered, and the child felt the movement.
"Don't you ever, ever tell," she panted, "or he'll kill me—and so would pa."
"Oh, he would, would he?" exclaimed Francis, who had stolen silently into the room and had stood unobserved in the darkness. "The cashier! the mean devil! I always hated his beady eyes, and he tried his games on me! But I'll kill him before he shall go—do you any real harm, Ettie! I will! I will! Why didn't you tell me? I watched for a while and then I thought—I thought he had given it up. Oh, Ettie, Ettie!" The tall form of the girl seemed to rise even higher in the darkness, and one could feel the fire of her great eyes. Her hands were clenched and her muscles tense.