“My maw says Mr. Stagg always was that way—that he hates to let go of anything he once gets in his hands. But it ain’t that, I tell her,” declared Chet. “It’s just that he can’t make up his mind to sell them things that was your mother’s, Car’lyn May,” added the boy, with a deeper insight into Mr. Stagg’s character than one might have given him credit for possessing.
But Carolyn May had heard some news that impressed her more deeply than this idiosyncrasy of Joseph Stagg’s. It made her suddenly quiet, and she was glad a customer came into the store just then to draw Chet Gormley’s attention.
The child had never thought before about how the good things of life came to her—her food, clothes, and lodging. She had never heard much talk of ways and means at home between her father and mother. When she had come to her uncle, if she had thought about it at all, she had supposed her parents had left ample means for her support, even if Uncle Joe did “take her home and look out for her,” as she had suggested to him at their first interview.
But, now, Chet Gormley’s chattering had given her a new view of the facts of the case. There had been no money left to spend for her needs. Uncle Joe was just keeping her out of charity!
“And Prince, too,” thought the little girl, with a lump in her throat. “He hasn’t got any more home than a rabbit! And Uncle Joe don’t really like dogs—not even now.
“Oh, dear me!” pursued Carolyn May. “It’s awful hard to be an orphan. But to be a poor orphan—just a charity one—is a whole lot worse, I guess.
“Of course, uncles aren’t like little girls’ real parents. Papas and mammas are glad, I guess, to pay for clothes and food and schoolbooks, and everything. But if a little girl is only a charity orphan, there aren’t really any folks that want to support her. I wonder if I ought to stay with Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and make them so much trouble?”
The thought bit deep into the little girl’s very impressionable mind. The idle chatter of the not very wise, if harmless, Chet Gormley was destined to cause Carolyn May much perturbation of spirit.
She did not remain at the store until her uncle returned. Chet urged her to stay and go home with him for dinner when Mr. Stagg came back, but the little girl did not feel that she could do this. She wished to be alone and to think over this really tragic thing that faced her—the ugly fact that she was a “charity child.”
“And you’re a charity dog, Prince Cameron,” she said aloud, looking down at the mongrel who walked sedately beside her along the country road. “I don’t expect you ever thought of it. You never did have any money, and you don’t really know who your parents are. You began being a charity dog so early that it hasn’t never mattered to you at all—that’s how I s’pose it must be.