“You oughtn’t to say that to me.” After a while she added in a hopeless tone:
“Mebbe it would be runnin’ away like you say, mebbe it would be quittin’. Jest the same,” her voice rose passionately, “I’d ruther be horsewhipped than stand another week like the one I’ve just gone through!”
Billie waited a moment, then reached out and touched Edina’s clenched fist where it rested on her voluminous skirt.
“Suppose you tell me something about yourself,” she suggested. “I think I can help you. I want to. I owe you something, you know, for saving my life.”
Edina hesitated for a moment; then began in a low, monotonous voice to tell the drab story of her life.
“Seems like we’ve always been poor, Paw and Maw and me,” began Edina. “Ever since I was a little shaver, I can’t remember anything but poverty. Paw was what you’d call a prospector.”
“Gold?” asked Billie.
“No, oil. He had some property and he was always sure there was oil on it. Seems to me I can never remember the time he wasn’t drillin’ holes somewheres tryin’ to strike a gusher.
“Maw and me we got fed up with it, what with bein’ holed up in the same little neck of the woods all the time and never goin’ nowheres nor havin’ nothing. There were days we went hungry——”
The droning voice broke off suddenly and Billie had a startlingly clear vision of that tragic little family, dying of monotony, starving a good deal of the time, with nothing but a vision to sustain them.