“That’s the way I was going,” he observed thoughtlessly. “From Hudsondale to Highvale, and right on down the west bank of the river to New York.”
Lou sat back on her heels reflectively.
“All right,” she said at last. “I ain’t ever figgered on goin’s far as New York, but I might as well go there as anywhere, and I guess I kin keep up with you now your back’s kinder sprained. We’ll go along together.”
James Botts gulped.
“Certainly not!” he retorted severely, when he could articulate. “It’s utterly out of the question! You’re not a little child any longer, 23and I’m not old enough to pose as your father. You must think what people would say!”
“Why must I?” Her clear eyes shamed him. “What’s it matter? I guess two kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an’ if I have been in a brick house with a high fence an’ a playground between where never a blade of grass grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take care of myself a lot better ’n you kin!”
“But you don’t understand!” he groaned. “There are certain conditions that I can’t very well explain, and if I did you’d think I had gone crazy.”
“Maybe,” Lou observed non-committally, but she settled herself on the bank once more with such an air of resigned anticipation that he felt forced to continue.
“You know an army has to obey orders, don’t you?” he floundered on desperately. “Well, I’m like a one-man army; there are a lot of rules I’ve got to follow. This is Monday afternoon, and I must reach New York by midnight on Saturday; that’s ninety miles or more, and you never could make it in the 24world. I’ve got just a dollar and a half, and I mustn’t beg, borrow, or steal food or a lift or anything, but work my way, and never take any job that’ll pay me more than twenty-five cents.
“Of course, if people invite me to get up and ride with them for a little I can accept, or if they offer me food, but I can’t ask. Even the money I earn in quarters here and there I mustn’t use for traveling, but only to buy food or medicine or clothes with. And the worst of it is that I cannot explain to a soul why I’m doing all this.”