“Queer place to live,” he mused as his eyes, sweeping from left to right, found brick structures of considerable height on every side. “Queer they’d leave such a shack standing. Stranger still that anyone’d care to live here. Fellow’d think—”
At that instant the back door of the larger of the two wooden structures opened and a girl stepped forth.
A girl of sixteen, with well rounded face and figure, big brown eyes and a disarming smile, she formed an unforgettable picture, framed as she was by the gray of decaying wood, the door frame.
“Hello.”
“Hello back,” said Johnny.
“You want some coffee? Yes?”
“Yes,” Johnny grinned.
“But say!” he exclaimed as she prepared to vanish. “Where is he?” He nodded toward the shack he had just left.
“Drew? Him? He is gone a long time. Before the sun is up. He is gone. Gone to work. What kind of work? I don’t know. Fine man, Drew Lane. You know him?”
“A little.”