CHAPTER X
BUSINESS EFFORTS AND A DISCOVERY
“I knew I wa’n’t one that could do anything underhanded without being ketched at it, I knew I wa’n’t!” said Loveday, rocking violently in her aunt’s old-fashioned haircloth rocking-chair, just as she did in the kitchen chintz-covered one at Groundnut Hill when she was greatly disturbed in mind.
I had found her in a little dingy house in a narrow, stuffy street, that meandered down a hill, apparently into Ethiopia, for it swarmed, at the foot, whither I had wandered seeking, with dusky faces.
I was forced to the conclusion that Loveday was not glad to see me. She did not like to be “ketched.” She had not explained, at all; she had allowed me to think that she had come to the city merely to visit her aunt, until I confided to her that I knew about the race-course.
“No, I never found what I came for. I never found it, at all!” she replied, in answer to my eager question, and she said it in a tone of discouragement that was rare for Loveday. “I expect I’m an old crank. Mebbe the idee that ketches a holt of you between midnight and sun-up is some like a dream; that’s what I been a-thinkin’, as I set here a-rockin’.”
“Loveday, won’t you tell me what the idea was?” I begged.
Loveday drew a long breath and hesitated. “No, I ain’t a-goin’ to tell nobody,” she said, positively, at length—“that is, without I have to tell Hiram, for I ain’t a-goin’ to give it up entirely until I set Hiram on to it. He’s got to have a tunin’ spell, Hiram has, when he gets home from peddlin’, and then he’ll go to photographin’ ag’in. Goin’ round up country he may come acrost the man I want to find—that’s Alf Reeder. He’s a man that owns race-horses. I wrote to Hiram when I found that photograph and he didn’t ’pear to know anything about him, couldn’t even remember where the photograph was took. Even if the man is found I ain’t anyways sure that he’ll know what—what I want to find out. I see in a paper that Alf Reeder’s horse was a-goin’ to race, over to that terrible place where I went, to-day, and off I come and left Viola to make soggy pie-crust, and scorch the tablecloths! I’m an old crank and I know I be! I’d better ’a’ been to home, a-makin’ my soft soap, and darnin’ Leander’s pantaloons, that he’s a-sufferin’ for. I forgot that folk’s duty was apt to lay where the Lord had sot ’em, and as my grandfather used to say, their luck was apt to be a-straddlin’ the backyard fence.”
“O Loveday! you were so much better than the rest of us. No one except Estelle has tried to do anything for the poor boy. And you did help, Loveday; it was Providence that led you to that place!” And I told her about Ned Carruthers and how strongly he had been impressed by her sermon.
“I bore my testimony,” said Loveday. “I couldn’t do no less! The wickedness of it all was so bore in upon me that I most forgot what I come for. Yes, I did, all of a sudden! I never hardly knew what I was a-sayin’, but I reckon mebbe the Lord was on my side. They was a-hootin’ and a-jeerin’, but it got stiller toward the last. You don’t say the young man was really took hold of?—and the same one that told on our poor boy?” Loveday called him Mr. David, very respectfully, to his face, and to outsiders, but never to me. “That does look some like the Lord’s leadin’s—he don’t lead folks away from home so often as they think he does.”
“Loveday, did you ever say anything to David about what you thought or suspected?” I asked, for I had always a good opinion of straightforward methods.