“Bertha wasn’t no more adopted than I am. Mrs. Foley ain’t adopted me. I wouldn’t want to be a Foley. And if you are adopted you have to take the name of the folks you live with. So 46 Bertha wasn’t adopted, and she had a right to run away. But she didn’t get to Dogtown.”
“But you think she might have come this way?”
“Yep. She’s never been to see me since we moved to Dogtown. So she maybe lost her way. Or she saw that woman and was scared. I’m looking to see if anybody seen her,” said the child, getting up briskly. “I guess you folks ain’t, has you?”
“I am afraid not,” said Jessie thoughtfully. “But we will be on the lookout for her, honey. You can come back again and ask me any time you like.”
The freckle-faced child looked her over curiously. “What do you say that for?” she demanded. “You don’t like me. I ain’t pretty. And you’re pretty—and that other girl,” (she said this rather grudgingly) “even if you do wear overalls.”
“Why! I want to help you,” said Jessie, somewhat startled by the strange girl’s downright way of speaking.
“You got a job for me up here?” asked Henrietta promptly. “I guess I’d rather work for you than for the Foleys.”
“Don’t the Foleys treat you kindly?” Amy ventured, really feeling an interest in the strange child.
“Guess she treats me as kind as a lady can when 47 she’s got six kids and a man that drinks,” Henrietta said with weariness. “But I’d like to wear better clo’es. I wouldn’t mind even wearing them overall things while I worked if I had better to wear other times.”
She looked down at her faded gingham, the patched stockings, the broken shoes. She wore no hat. Really, she was a miserable-looking little thing, and the four more fortunate young people all considered this fact silently as Henrietta moved slowly away and went down the path to the street.