I met her on Purgatory Hill one day—and never did that name seem to apply so well! I had been out on my uncle’s business, and among other plunder in the beach-wagon were two shotes in a crate, and they certainly were taking on about leaving home and mother.
She was alone in her pony-chaise and the shaggy little brute she drove was frightened—and I didn’t blame him. I pulled as far into the gutter as I could and waited; I poked the butt of my whip into the crate and prodded those shotes, but that only made them screech the louder.
So she came leading her pony past me. I didn’t expect that she would stop and speak to me, but she did. I nearly fell off my seat. And she called me “Mr. Sidney.” It was the first time anybody had ever given me a handle to my name. I had pulled my hat off when I saw her coming; when she spoke to me I put it back on again and then took it off so that I could show her that I knew a little something about manners. However, I wasn’t at all sure just what I was doing; my head was in a whirl, and I was damning those pigs in my heart.
“I thank you, Mr. Sidney,” she said. “Pedro acts like a fool sometimes.”
Two hours afterward, I guess it was, I thought of just the right reply to that remark; as it was, I didn’t say anything to her. I couldn’t.
She started on and then stopped and looked at me.
Perhaps she guessed something—I don’t know. Girls can act as if they never notice anything and still they have an eye out all the time; and what they don’t see they know by instinct. At any rate, there was a lot of kindness in her face, and perhaps there was pity in her thoughts.
“I’m afraid I am very bold, Mr. Sidney. I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking to you.”
She hesitated. Right there was another beautiful chance for me to say the good thing which came to me that night after I was in bed. All I could do at the time was duck my head.
“I’d hate to have any of the boys who went to school with me get into trouble on account of their thoughtlessness. I’m sure it’s only thoughtlessness and skylarking. But older folks, you know, don’t understand and cannot sympathize with young folks. Now you won’t tell anybody that I told you something, will you?”