Lou accepted it gravely.
“Thank you, sir,” she said primly. “You ain’t got any call to give me this, not after bringin’ us all the way from Hudsondale.”
“I guess I can make a little present if I’m a mind ter, ter a pretty little girl like you.” 51Mr. Perkins turned to Jim. “Wish yer both luck on your way.”
They took leave of the kindly little fat man and moved off up the village street and beyond the inevitable car tracks to the dwindling country road once more. In the shade of a big tree at a crossroads, Lou glanced up at her companion.
“Could we set down here for a spell?” she asked. “I ain’t tired, Jim, but I feel like I’d die if I can’t open this!”
She gestured with Mr. Perkins’s gift, and Jim dropped laughingly on the grass.
“Of course. Let’s see what’s in it.”
Gravely she seated herself beside him and unknotted the square of white. It contained three little handkerchiefs with pink borders, a small bottle of particularly strong scent, and a string of beads remotely resembling coral. The square in which the articles had been wrapped proved to be a large white silk handkerchief with an American flag stamped in the corner.
“That must be for you, Jim,” Lou said slowly. As in a trance she slipped the string 52of beads over her head, opened the bottle, and poured a few drops of its contents upon one of the little handkerchiefs, inhaling the rank odor in ecstasy.
Jim watched her, amused but touched also. To that luxury-starved little soul the coarse handkerchiefs and cheap perfume meant rapture, and he resolved to see that the gray-haired lady in New York provided something better for Lou than a servant’s position. Education, perhaps─