“Ain’t he slick, though? Can’t get a bit of real information out of him except that he liked the looks of Nantic and dropped off the slow freight when she was shunting back and forth up yonder. What’s your name?”
“Joe. Joe Blake.” He didn’t look at Mr. Briggs, but off at the hills, wind swept and bare except for their patches of living green pines. There was a curious expression in his eyes, Jean thought, not loneliness, but a dumb fatalism. As Cousin Roxy might have put it, it was as if all the waves and billows of trouble had passed over him, and he didn’t expect anything better.
“How old are you?”
“ ’Bout nine or ten.”
“What made you drop off that freight here?”
Joe was silent and seemed embarrassed. Doris caught a gleam of appeal in his glance and responded instantly.
“Because you liked it best, isn’t that why?” she suggested eagerly. Joe’s face brightened up at that.
“I liked the looks of the hills, but when I saw all them mills I—I thought I’d get some work maybe.”
“You’re too little.” Mr. Briggs cut short that hope in its upspringing. “I’m going to hand you right over to the proper authorities, and you’ll land up in the State Home for Boys if you haven’t got any folks of your own.”
Joe met the shrewd, twinkly grey eyes doubtfully. His own filled with tears reluctantly, big tears that rose slowly and dropped on his worn short coat. He put his hand up to his shirt collar and held on to it tightly as if he would have kept back the ache there, and Jean’s heart could stand it no longer.