"Well, you shouldn't 'a' run away in the first place. Didn't we treat you right?"
To have answered that question in the negative would not have been to be altogether true, and Mary did not even yet see enough clearly to discern that the conditions which had driven her from home were economic forces that made parents and child equally blameless.
"Can't I stay here?" she appealed. "Can't I please stay here an' work for you?"
Mrs. Denbigh shook her head.
"I'd work hard. I'd help you. I wouldn't never complain. All I want is just to be quiet. I'd work hard. Nobody'd never know."
"It'd be all over town by evenin' still."
"No, it wouldn't. I'd say I was a widow. I'd say——"
"Think o' your pop," sobbed Mrs. Denbigh. "Why, he'd—he'd kill you, Mary!" The mother shivered as she considered the wrath of the giant, whom hard work had hardened past the touch of all the tenderer emotions. "He'd just beat you up an' throw you into the street for everybody to see!" She half rose in a new anxiety. "Why, he's on the early shift, an' he might come here 'most any minute. Etta might come in, an' Sallie'll be back from school soon."
"But, mom," Mary blindly persisted. "I'd work so hard! I wouldn't never be cross. I'd help you. I'd do all the housework, an' you could teach me to cook the way you do."
"We got to think o' Sallie yet," continued Mrs. Denbigh. "Every time she gets mad now she says she'll run away like you done. We got to think o' her. She's a growin' girl, an' what'd it be to have you around her?"