An hour later and throughout the night, a slim little figure, rolled in a man’s shabby coat, lay sleeping peacefully in a corner of the mill, while on the doorstep in his shirt sleeves and with a stout cudgel across his knees, a weary man drowsed fitfully, on guard.
41CHAPTER III
The Vendor of Everything
When Lou awakened the next morning at dawn it was her turn to find herself deserted, but the fact failed to arouse any misgivings in her mind. She had found in her brief experience with menfolks that they were mostly queer, one way or another, but this one was dependable, and she felt no doubt that he would turn up when he got ready.
Unwrapping her bundle, she took the apron, soap, and broken comb, and wandered down the bank of the stream until in the seclusion beneath the bridge she came upon a pool formed by outjutting rocks, where she performed her limited toilet. Then, scrubbing the greasy apron vigorously, she hung it on a bramble bush behind the mill to dry, and scuttling across the road, made for 42the woods back of the house where she had committed her nocturnal depredation.
An hour later when Jim came slowly up the hill road from the direction of Hudsondale, he saw a tiny smudge of smoke rising from a rock well hidden in the rank undergrowth at the edge of the stream, and approaching it found Lou industriously brushing her coat with a broom which she had improvised of small twigs tied together. Beside her, carefully cradled in her sunbonnet, were half a dozen new-laid eggs.
“Good morning.” He greeted her with a little bow, and sank down on the rock. “Were you frightened to find yourself left all alone?”
“Oh, no. I knew you would come back,” she replied serenely. Then, as she noted his glance fall upon the eggs she added in swift self-defense: “You needn’t think I stole those; I found them back in the woods a piece. O-oh!”
He had carried a large paper package under his arm, and now as he unwrapped it her wonderment changed to swift rapture. It contained an overall apron of bright pink 43check, a cheap straw hat, and a remnant of green ribbon.
“I ain’t had a pink dress since I was ten!” Her dark eyes were perilously glistening. “I’d almost have died for one, but you had to wear blue after that, ’count of doin’ work ’round. Oh, an’ that hat! I kin put that ribbon on it as easy as─”