Yet away down in her heart was a little hurt feeling for which she could not have assigned a cause even to herself. Of course she trusted him, and he would not have lied to her, but could there really be another “Jim” in the world who looked quite like him, and whose name was so nearly the same?
She had sensed instinctively, and the more clearly perhaps because of her lack of worldly experience, that he was different, not only from herself, but from all whom they had encountered upon their journey, yet could he 91really be that grand young lady’s “Jimmie,” after all?
As she stepped aside to lift the basket into which the sodden garments had fallen from the wringer, her foot chanced to crunch upon something that yielded with a crisp rustle, and she glanced down. It was the little red note-book which she had seen in Jim’s overall-pocket when he came from the barn; it must have fallen out as he crossed the porch to go to the hay-field.
It had opened, and the front cover was pressed back, with the stamp of her heel, showing plainly upon the first page, and as she stooped slowly and picked it up Lou could not help reading the three words which were written across it in a bold, characteristic hand:
JAMES TARRISFORD ABBOTT
There was something else, an address, no doubt, written below, but Lou closed the book quickly and dropped it upon a near-by bench, as though it burned her fingers. For a moment 92she stood very still with her eyes closed and her little water-shriveled hands tightly interlocked, and in that instant of time the happy, careless co-adventurer of the last two marvelous days vanished, and in his place there appeared a stranger, a man of the world, in which that young lady of the motor-car moved.
For the first time in Lou’s life a panic seized her, a desperate longing to run away. She opened her eyes and looked across the hay-fields to where that tall, stalwart figure worked beside the two smaller ones. Even from that distance he looked different, somehow; he wasn’t the same Jim.
Slowly, with a mist before her eyes she picked up the heavy basket, and, descending the steps of the porch, spread the garments upon the bleaching grass to dry. The glittering glories of the circus had turned all at once to a black shadow in her memory, and she wished fervently that she had never seen it nor those rich people who had come to make a mock of it, but had stayed to applaud Jim.
93But why shouldn’t they, even if they hadn’t recognized him? He belonged to their world, not hers. Then a new, inexpressibly forlorn thought came to her; what was her world, anyway? She didn’t belong anywhere; there was no place for her unless she made one for herself, some time.
With that, in spite of this strange, new weariness which dragged at her heart, Lou’s indomitable spirit reasserted itself, and her small teeth clamped together. She would make herself a place somewhere, somehow.