"I ain't thinkin'," was the answer, and at this Ambrose swore softly, though you may count on his having sworn under his breath.
"Look here, you got to tell me a straight story. I ought to 'a' made you before," he confessed. "I reckon I knew you were runnin' away from that orphan asylum and I kind of wanted to help, even more when that fellow came after you, but we can't go traipsin' around all night, and I got to find Liza. You oughtn't to have run away from a good asylum if you hadn't no friends."
Ambrose knew himself for a liar before the girl on the ground began rocking herself back and forth with her hands clasped over her knees.
"I ought to, I ought to, I ought to," she repeated until her words had the swaying influence of a chant. "You know nothin' about it. I have been in that place so long I can't remember anywheres else. How can I have friends? I don't know nobody, I don't love nobody, I ain't nobody! Why, there's mornings when I get up and lookin' at the other orphans, seein' we are dressed alike and got to do the same things at the same time all day, I begin to think maybe there ain't any me. I'm just one of them—any one." She began crying now, but that did not interrupt her passionate speech. "I've been thinkin' of runnin' away a long time. P'raps I'll have a hard time; I don't care. Ain't I a right to find out?"
And this of course the young man could not answer, so he only passed his hand over his brow. "Well, you might 'a' stayed at the asylum a little longer," and then because he was Ambrose, "or at least till I got safely past that woodpile."
"I was too old," she defended. "I ought not to have stayed so long as I did, only nobody knew what to do with me." She was looking up into her companion's face close, that she might find something more of help in it. "Maybe you know some one that might want me? I know lots of things, cleanin' and cookin' some——" She would like to have continued to pour out her poor list of accomplishments, but Ambrose stopped her.
For some time the fear had been growing upon him that the child he believed himself to have rescued was not so much a child as he had first supposed. Of course he had never seen her very plainly and there was nothing to judge by in her short, scant dress. "Would you mind," he now inquired, "tellin' me just about how old you are?"
"Sixteen."
Ambrose groaned. For in Kentucky half a century ago, you must remember, sixteen was thought an age nearer that of a woman than of a girl.
"Then I've got to take you back to the orphans," he announced.