“It must be past noon, for the shadows have started to go the other way.” Her voice broke in upon his meditations. “We’d better eat the rolls an’ ham now. How far is it to where we’re goin’?”
“Eight miles; I’m afraid it is a long way for you─”
“Then the sooner we git started the better,” the girl interrupted. “I’ll take the pan an’ run back to that yellow house we just passed for some water.”
Without waiting for a reply she tilted the little scent bottle carefully against the tree-trunk and departed, while Jim stretched himself 53out luxuriously in the grateful shade. He was tired, and the still heat of noon had a stupefying effect. Lou seemed long in returning, and his thoughts grew nebulous until he finally drifted off into slumber.
When he awakened the shadows had lengthened to those of mid-afternoon, and there was a delicious, unaccustomed aroma in the air. He gazed about him in a bewildered fashion to find Lou sitting cross-legged in the grass, and spread upon it on the apron between them were the rolls and ham, and a huckleberry pie, still warm, and fairly exuding juice.
“Good Lord, where did you get it?” he demanded.
“Remember that yellow house where I went to git water?” Lou laughed, but there was a new note of shyness in her voice. “When we passed it first I saw that the currant bushes were just loaded down, an’ a woman was out pickin’ them, though it’s ironin’ day. I figgered if I pick for her she’d maybe pay me, an’ she did. I–I guessed you was out of–this.”
54The freckles disappeared in a rosy blush as with a red-stained hand she held out a bag of tobacco.
“Lou! Why, you–you precious kid!” Jim stammered. “You worked in all this heat, while I lay here and slept.”
“It wasn’t far back to New Hartz, an’ I’d seen where the cigar-store was when we came by. The woman at the house, she give me the pie, an’ I’ve got ten cents left besides. I never had ten cents of my own before!”