“I never saw such a funny-looking creature,” Dorothy told herself, as she watched the boy from across the street. “And I don’t remember ever having seen him in Dalton before. He looks ignorant enough to have written that letter I received, too; and yet—there is an innocent look about his face. I wonder if he really has intelligence enough to fix up any scheme to make money out of those who wish to find Tom Moran?”
The boy dawdled along the street and Dorothy walked on the other side, looking into shop windows now and then, but unfailing in her vigilance. She did not let the shambling youth out of her line of vision; and especially was she watchful when he passed close to any other person.
Nobody spoke to him; he seemed quite unknown in the town. He drifted down toward the railroad yards where—in two or three mean streets—the poorer and most shiftless denizens of Dalton resided.
Down here was an open lot on which much of the refuse of the town was dumped to fill in a yawning gully. Ashes and piles of cans, and boxes and the like, offered to the poorer children a playground most amusing, if not conducive to health. At one corner two or three shacks—incongruous huts they were—had been constructed. Certain squatters evidently had taken up their abode in these, despite the still cool weather.
Lengths of rusty stovepipes were thrust through the side walls of these huts. The roofs were made of oil cans, unsoldered, and beaten flat, the sheets overlapping one another. Doors wabbled on leather hinges. A broken window was plugged up with an old silk hat.
“I’D VERY MUCH LIKE TO KNOW YOUR NAME,” SAID DOROTHY.
Dorothy Dale’s Promise. Page [207].
Dorothy felt a shiver as she ventured further into the bad section of the town; but she was determined to learn something more of the boy who had received the letter addressed to “John Smith” from the post-office.
He crossed the open lot, aiming without doubt for the squalid huts. Dorothy quickened her steps and remained on the sidewalk, following the line of the open square. She reached the corner nearest to the huts just as the youth strolled out of the open gully and to the side of the nearest shack.
There, sitting upon an overturned tub, barefooted, and dressed in coarse petticoat and blouse, was a hatless woman picking over a mess of greens in a rusty dishpan.