“I had a little shop once—a millinery shop, where I did sewing, too,” she confided. Somehow she felt she must speak of her home. It had come to her as a shy child comes to its mother’s knee, and she must give it some touch of recognition. “It was a shop in the front, and I had my living rooms in behind, and a little garden on the side with sweet peas and nasturtiums in it,” she went on, offering the inner vision propitiation.
“My! That must’ve been nice,” the other said. “You’d like that. My Lord! Ain’t it hot! I wish’t I was in the country right this minute.” She mopped her face with a dingy handkerchief. “What was the name of the place?”
“Oh, it’s just a little town up in the mountains,” Julie evaded. “You wouldn’t ever have heard of it.”
“What’s its name?” Mrs. Watkins persisted. “Maybe I have. I had a brother used to be in the lumber business up in the western part of the state.”
“Its name—its name—” Julie hesitated. She found it extraordinarily difficult to lie, and yet to speak the truth would be utter recklessness. All the time the little shop which had been her home seemed to hang there in her mind expectant, waiting to see whether she would own or deny it.
“Its name’s Red River,” she said at last, with an effort. Instantly the picture of the shop broke and swirled away. “Oh, no, it isn’t! No, it isn’t!” she corrected herself breathlessly, and completely reckless now. “It’s Hart’s Run. Red River’s the county town. But it’s Hart’s Run—Hart’s Run,” she cried, “where my home was.”
Then, terrified by what she had done, her heart began to flutter violently up and down and she looked wildly about for some means of changing the conversation. As she did so she caught sight through the window of a strange old woman going down the porch steps, and passing uncertainly out into the street.
“Oh, Mrs. Watkins,” Julie whispered, “look quick. Who is that old woman?”
Mrs. Watkins peeped out. “That? Oh, that’s the poor old soul lives all by herself up on the third floor. She’s mighty peculiar. It’s Miss Fogg.”
“I’ve seen her several times, an’ meant to ask about her. What’s the matter with her? She looks—she looks dreadful,” Julie cried, glad to elaborate the subject, and hoping that the name she had spoken would be overlooked.