don't allow mesilf to be thinking."
"Come, have a cool drink before you start back," said the Angel.
"I couldn't possibly," said Freckles. "I left Mrs. Duncan on the
trail, and she's
terribly afraid of a lot of things. If she even
sees a big snake, I don't know what she'll do."
"It won't take but a minute, and you can ride fast enough to make
up for it. Please. I want to think of something fine for you, to
make up a little for what you did for me that first day."
Freckles looked in sheer wonderment into the beautiful face of
the Angel. Did she truly mean it? Would she walk down that street
with him, crippled,
homely, in mean clothing, with the tools of his
occupation on him, and share with him the treat she was offering?
He could not believe it, even of the Angel. Still, in justice to
the candor of her pure, sweet face, he would not think that she
would make the offer and not mean it. She really did mean just what
she said, but when it came to carrying out her offer and he saw the
stares of her friends, the sneers of her enemies--if such as she
could have enemies--and heard the whispered jeers of the curious,
then she would see her mistake and be sorry. It would be only a
manly thing for him to think this out, and save her from the
results of her own
blessed bigness of heart.
"I railly must be off," said Freckles
earnestly, "but I'm thanking
you more than you'll ever know for your kindness. I'll just be
drinking bowls of icy things all me way home in the thoughts of it."
Down came the Angel's foot. Her eyes flashed
indignantly. "There's
no sense in that," she said. "How do you think you would have felt
when you knew I was warm and thirsty and you went and brought me a
drink and I wouldn't take it because--because
goodness knows why!
You can ride faster to make up for the time. I've just thought out
what I want to fix for you."
She stepped to his side and
deliberately slipped her hand under his
arm--that right arm that ended in an empty sleeve.
"You are coming," she said
firmly. "I won't have it."
Freckles could not have told how he felt, neither could anyone else.
His blood rioted and his head swam, but he kept his wits. He bent
over her.
"Please don't, Angel," he said
softly. "You don't understand."
How Freckles came to understand was a problem.
"It's this," he persisted. "If your father met me on the street, in
my station and dress, with you on me arm, he'd have every right to
be caning me before the people, and not a finger would I lift to
stay him."
The Angel's eyes snapped. "If you think my father cares about my
doing anything that is right and kind, and that makes me happy to
do--why, then you completely failed in
reading my father, and I'll
ask him and just show you."
She dropped Freckles' arm and turned toward the entrance to
the building. "Why, look there!" she exclaimed.
Her father stood in a big window fronting the street, a
bundle of
papers in his hand, interestedly watching the little scene, with
eyes that comprehended quite as
thoroughly as if he had heard
every word. The Angel caught his glance and made a
despairing little
gesture toward Freckles. The Man of Affairs answered her with a
look of
infinitetenderness. He nodded his head and waved the
papers in the direction she had indicated, and the veriest dolt
could have read the words his lips formed: "Take him along!"
A sudden trembling seized Freckles. At sight of the Angel's father
he had stepped back as far from her as he could, leaned the wheel
against him, and snatched off his hat.
The Angel turned on him with triumphing eyes.
She was highly strung and not accustomed to being thwarted.
"Did You see that?" she demanded. "Now are you satisfied?
Will you come, or must I call a
policeman to bring you?"
Freckles went. There was nothing else to do. Guiding his wheel, he
walked down the street beside her. On every hand she was kept busy
giving and receiving the cheeriest greetings. She walked into the
parlors exactly as if she owned them. A clerk came hurrying to meet her.
"There's a table
vacant beside a window where it is cool. I'll save
it for you," and he started back.
"Please not," said the Angel. "I've taken this man unawares, when
he's in a rush. I'm afraid if we sit down we'll take too much time
and afterward he will blame me."
She walked to the
fountain, and a long row of people stared with
all the varying degrees of
insolence and
curiosity that Freckles
had felt they would. He glanced at the Angel. NOW would she see?
"On my soul!" he muttered under his
breath. "They don't aven touch her!"
She laid down her sunshade and gloves. She walked to the end of the
counter and turned the full
battery of her eyes on the
attendant.
"Please," she said.
The white-aproned individual stepped back and gave
delighted assent.
The Angel stepped beside him, and selecting a tall, flaring glass,
of almost paper thinness, she stooped and rolled it in a tray of
cracked ice.
"I want to mix a drink for my friend," she said. "He has a long,
hot ride before him, and I don't want him started off with one of
those old palate-teasing sweetnesses that you mix just on purpose
to drive a man back in ten minutes." There was an appreciative
laugh from the line at the
counter.
"I want a clear, cool, sparkling drink that has a tang of acid in it.
Where's the
cherryphosphate? That, not at all sweet, would be good;
don't you think?"
The
attendant did think. He
pointed out the different taps, and the
Angel compounded the drink, while Freckles,
standing so erect he
almost leaned
backward, gazed at her and paid no attention to
anyone else. When she had the glass brimming, she tilted a little
of its
contents into a second glass and tasted it.
"That's entirely too sweet for a thirsty man," she said.
She poured out half the
mixture, and refilling the glass, tasted
it a second time. She submitted that result to the
attendant.
"Isn't that about the thing?" she asked.
He replied
enthusiastically. "I'd get my wages raised ten a month
if I could learn that trick."
The Angel carried the brimming,
frosty glass to Freckles. He removed
his hat, and lifting the icy
liquid even with her eyes and looking
straight into them, he said in the mellowest of all the mellow
tones of his voice: "I'll be drinking it to the Swamp Angel."
As he had said to her that first day, she now cautioned him:
"Be drinking slowly."
When the screen-door swung behind them, one of the men at the
counter asked of the
attendant: "Now, what did that mean?"
"Exactly what you saw," replied he, rather curtly. "We're accustomed
to it here. Hardly a day passes, this hot weather, but she's
picking up some poor, god-forsaken
mortal and bringing him in.
Then she comes behind the
counter herself and fixes up a drink
to suit the occasion. She's all sorts of fancies about what's what
for all kinds of times and conditions, and you bet she can just hit
the spot! Ain't a clerk here can put up a drink to touch her.
She's a sort of knack at it. Every once in a while, when the Boss
sees her, he calls out to her to mix him a drink."
"And does she?" asked the man with an interested grin.
"Well, I guess! But first she goes back and sees how long it is
since he's had a drink. What he drank last. How warm he is. When he
ate last. Then she comes here and mixes a glass of fizz with a
little touch of acid, and a bit of
cherry, lemon, grape, pineapple,
or something sour and cooling, and it hits the spot just as no spot
was ever hit before. I
honestly believe that the INTEREST she takes
in it is half the trick, for I watch her closely and I can't come
within gunshot of her concoctions. She has a
running bill here.
Her father settles once a month. She gives nine-tenths of it away.
Hardly ever touches it herself, but when she does she makes me mix it.
She's just old persimmons. Even the scrub-boy of this establishment
would fight for her. It lasts the year round, for in winter it's some
poor,
frozen cuss that she's
warming up on hot coffee or chocolate."
"Mighty queer
specimen she had this time," volunteered another.
"Irish, hand off, straight as a ramrod, and something worth while
in his face. Notice that hat peel off, and the eyes of him?
There's a case of `fight for her!' Wonder who he is?"
"I think," said a third, "that he's McLean's Limberlost guard, and
I
suspect she's gone to the swamp with the Bird Woman for pictures
and knows him that way. I've heard that he is a master hand with
the birds, and that would just suit the Bird Woman to a T."
On the street the Angel walked beside Freckles to the first
crossing and there she stopped. "Now, will you promise to ride fast
enough to make up for the five minutes that took?" she asked.
"I am a little
uneasy about Mrs. Duncan."
Freckles turned his wheel into the street. It seemed to him he had
poured that
delicious icy
liquid into every vein in his body
instead of his
stomach. It even went to his brain.
"Did you insist on fixing that drink because you knew how
intoxicating `twould be?" he asked.
There was
subtlety in the
compliment and it
delighted the Angel.
She laughed gleefully.
"Next time, maybe you won't take so much coaxing," she teased.
"I wouldn't this, if I had known your father and been under
standingyou better. Do you really think the Bird Woman will be coming again?"
The Angel jeered. "Wild horses couldn't drag her away," she cried.
"She will have hard work to wait the week out. I shouldn't be in
the least surprised to see her start any hour."
Freckles could not
endure the
suspense; it had to come.
"And you?" he questioned, but he dared not lift his eyes.
"Wild horses me, too," she laughed, "couldn't keep me away either!
I
dearly love to come, and the next time I am going to bring my
banjo, and I'll play, and you sing for me some of the songs I like
best; won't you?"
"Yis," said Freckles, because it was all he was
capable of saying
just then.
"It's
beginning to act stormy," she said. "If you hurry you will
just about make it. Now, good-bye."
CHAPTER IX
Wherein the Limberlost Falls upon Mrs. Duncan and Freckles
Comes to the Rescue
Freckles was halfway to the Limberlost when he dismounted. He could
ride no farther, because he could not see the road. He sat under a
tree, and, leaning against it, sobs shook, twisted, and rent him.
If they would
remind him of his position, speak condescendingly, or
notice his hand, he could
endure it, but this--it surely would kill him!
His hot, pulsing Irish blood was stirred deeply. What did they mean?
Why did they do it? Were they like that to
everyone? Was it pity?
It could not be, for he knew that the Bird Woman and the Angel's
father must know that he was not really McLean's son, and it did
not matter to them in the least. In spite of accident and poverty,
they
evidently expected him to do something worth while in the world.
That must be his
remedy. He must work on his education. He must
get away. He must find and do the great thing of which the
Angel talked. For the first time, his thoughts turned anxiously
toward the city and the
beginning of his studies. McLean and the
Duncans spoke of him as "the boy," but he was a man. He must face
life
bravely and act a man's part. The Angel was a mere child.
He must not allow her to
torture him past
endurance with her frank
comradeship that meant to him high heaven, earth's
richness, and
all that lay between, and NOTHING to her.
There was an
ominous growl of
thunder, and amazed at himself,
Freckles snatched up his wheel and raced toward the swamp. He was
worried to find his boots lying at the cabin door; the children
playing on the woodpile told him that "mither" said they were so
heavy she couldn't walk in them, and she had come back and taken
them off. Thoroughly frightened, he stopped only long enough to
slip them on, and then sped with all his strength for the Limberlost.
To the west, the long, black, hard-beaten trail lay clear; but far
up the east side, straight across the path, he could see what was
certainly a limp, brown figure. Freckles spun with all his might.