CHAPTER XVI.
BERTY’S TRAMP
Berty was away out on the lonely road leading from the iron works to the city.
Grandma had not been well all day, and Berty had gone to ask Bonny to spend the night in the River Street house. Since the boy’s admission into Roger’s office he had virtually lived in Roger’s house.
Not that he loved Margaretta and Roger more than he loved his grandmother and Berty, but the Grand Avenue style of living was more in accord with his aristocratic tastes than the plain ways of the house in River Street. So the boy really had two homes.
Berty, who had been in the house with her grandmother all through the morning, had enjoyed the long walk out to the iron works, and was now enjoying the long walk home.
It was a perfect afternoon. “How I love the late summer,” murmured the girl, and she gazed admiringly about her at the ripening grain fields, the heavily foliaged trees, the tufts of goldenrod flowering beside the dusty road.
Away off there in the distance was a moving cloud of dust coming from the city. Nearer at hand, it resolved itself into a man who was shuffling along in a lazy way, and kicking up very much more dust than there was any necessity of doing.
Berty stared at him. She knew most of the citizens of Riverport by sight, and whether she knew them by sight or not, she could tell by their general appearance whether they belonged to the place.
This man was a stranger—a seedy, poor-looking man with a brown face, and he was observing her as intently as she was observing him.