“My mother died when I was born,” he confided. “I guess I’d rather have it that way. It would hurt worse to lose your mother, after you really knew her. Say, Thurley, I wanted to tell you I’d like to have you join our gang. There’s about eight of us now—all boys—but I think you’d be just as good. Maybe it would make you forget; maybe your father will go to work and you’ll never go away from here; maybe my father will give him a job, if he can tote barrels. I’ll ask him and you join our gang and we’ll be happy.”
“I’ll have to work,” Thurley corrected. “Pa’s awful sick; Ma thought he would die when we was on the road. He can’t tote barrels and neither can I, but I’d like to join the gang, Dan, if I have time. And when your circus plays at South Wales, I’ll come and sing.” She held out her hand in gratitude.
The boy took it awkwardly. “I liked you right off,” he admitted. “If you see me getting too fresh or mis-spelling words or things like that—tell me. I’ll take it from you. Everybody thinks because my father made money selling beer that I’m going to be hung. Maybe I’ll go to school like you said—I’m not going to be any old bum, anyhow—and, if you decide to join the gang, we meet at Wood’s Hollow by Dog Creek every afternoon it ain’t raining, but don’t tell Lorraine McDowell, because she wanted to be my girl this winter and I won’t let her.”
With which he strutted out of the wagon with the serious feeling of a muchly married man. Somehow Dan had “adopted” Thurley. He felt personally responsible for her happiness and support, and, when he tried convincing his father that Thurley ought to get nine dollars a week for doing nothing and his father jokingly dismissed the matter, Daniel registered a vow that he must see to it that she had everything for which her feminine soul should desire! It was the first time in his life that the finer part of the lad had had a chance to show itself.
Philena Pilrig told her grandmother after Thurley’s first visit, “She makes my fingers tingle down at the ends, and, when she smiles, I want to hug her, and, when she sings, I want to cry and dance all at once.”
Philena, who was eleven but small because of the twisted spine, sat in the window facing the old wagon car, so she could catch glimpses of Thurley striding about bare-legged, her ragged dress fluttering gracefully in the breeze, whistling or singing or calling out to her father who lay on the lounge and coughed and complained.
Having invited the Precores to camp on her land, Betsey Pilrig also felt responsible for their welfare. She saw to it that Thurley washed dishes and ran errands in return for food, and, once, when she ventured over to interview her father as to his intentions of ever working, Thurley stood guard on the steps to tell her “Pa was sleeping—he’s getting that gray look around his lips.”
“Thurley, did you ever go to Sunday school?” she asked one afternoon when Thurley and Philena were intent on paper dolls.
“No, but it’s where you learn about the Lord and you have a Christmas tree—the evangelist told me.”