Her cold little hands trembled with eagerness as she jerked her work dress over her head and arrayed her slight body in the lace-trimmed white lawn "Sunday dress" which she had worn earlier in the day on her trip from the orphanage. Excitedly, she slapped her pale, faintly flushed cheeks to make them more red, then bit her lips hard in lieu of lipstick.

When she tiptoed down the dark hall of the garret she found David Nash's door ajar, caught a glimpse of the university student-farmhand bent over a pine table crowded with books.

She crept on to the head of the narrow, steep stairs, and there her courage failed her. The dance music, coming in full and strong over the radio, had just begun, and she could hear the shuffle of feet on the bare floor of the living room. How had she thought for one minute that she could brave those alien eyes, intrude, uninvited, upon Pearl's party? Hadn't Pearl made it cruelly clear that she despised her, resented her, because of David's interest in her?

"Want to dance?"

She had been leaning over the narrow pine banister, but she straightened then, a hand going to her heart, for it was David standing near her in the dark, and his voice was very kind.

CHAPTER III

At 11 o'clock that Sat.u.r.day night Sally Ford blew out the flame in the small kerosene lamp-the electric light wires had not been brought to the garret-and then knelt beside the low cot bed to pray, as she had been taught to do in the orphanage.

After she had raced mechanically through her childish "Now-I-lay-me,"

she lifted her small face, that gleamed pearly-white in the faint moonlight, and, clasping her thin little hands tightly, spoke in a low, pa.s.sionate voice directly to G.o.d, whom she imagined bending His majestic head to listen:

"Oh, thank you, G.o.d, for making David like me, and for letting me dance with him. And if dancing is a sin, please forgive me, G.o.d, for I didn't mean any harm. And please make Pearl not hate me so much just because David is sweet to me. She has so many friends and a father and mother and a grandmother and a nice home and so many pretty clothes, while I haven't anything. Make her feel kinder toward me, dear G.o.d, and I'll work so hard and be so good! And please, G.o.d, keep my heart and body pure, like Mrs. Stone says."

Lying in bed, covered only with the scant nightgown she had brought from the orphanage, Sally did not feel the oppressive heat nor the hardness and lumpiness of her cornshuck mattress. For she was reliving the hour she had spent in the Carson living room, sponsored by a stern-faced David who seemed determined to force Pearl and her giggling, chattering friends to accept the timid little orphan as an equal.

She felt again the pain in her heart at their veiled insults, their deliberate snubs, the concentrated fury that gleamed at her from Pearl's pale blue eyes. But again, as during that hour, the hurt was healed by the blessed fact of David's championship. She lay very still to recapture the bliss of David's arm about her waist, as he whirled her lightly in a fox trot, the music for which came so mysteriously from a little box with dials and a horn like a phonograph. She heard again his precious compliment, spoken loudly enough for Pearl to hear: "You're the best dancer I ever danced with, Sally. I'm going to ask you to the Junior Prom next year."

Of course he had danced with Pearl, too, and the other girls, who had made eyes at him and angled for compliments on their own dancing. When he danced with Pearl, her husky young body pressed closely against his, her fingertips audaciously brushed the golden crispness of his hair. She had even tried to dance cheek-to-cheek with David, but he had held her back stiffly.

The other boys-Ross Willis and Purdy Bates-had not asked Sally to dance with them, after Pearl had whispered half-audible, fierce commands; but their rudeness had no power to still the little song of thanksgiving that trilled in her heart, for always David came back to her, looking glad and relieved, and it was with her that David sat between dances, talking steadily and entertainingly, to hide her shy silences.

She sighed in memory, a quivering sigh of pure pleasure, when she lived again the minutes in the kitchen when she and David had washed gla.s.ses and plates, while the others danced in the parlor. They had not returned, but together had slipped up the back stairs to the garret, David bidding her a cheerful good-night as he turned into his own room to study for an hour before going to bed.

She had learned, during those talks with David, that he was twenty years old, that he had completed two years' work in the State Agricultural and Mechanical College; that he was working summers on farms as much for the practical experience as for the money earned, for his ambition was to be a scientific farmer, so that he might make the most of the farm which he would some day inherit from his grandfather. His grandfather's place adjoined the Carson farm, but it was being worked "on shares" by a large family of brothers, who had no need for David's labor in the summer. She knew, too, from his modest replies to questions asked by Ross Willis and Purdy Bates, that David was a star athlete, that he had already won his letter in football and that he had been boxing champion of the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s.

"But he likes _me_," Sally exulted. "He likes me better than Pearl or Bessie Coates or Sue Mullins. I suppose," she added honestly, "he's sorry for me because I'm an orphan and Pearl has it 'in' for me, but I don't care why he's nice to me, just so he is."

The radio music stopped at half-past eleven. Soon afterward Sally heard the shouted good-nights of Pearl's guests: "We had a swell time, Pearl!"

"Don't forget, Pearl! Our house tomorrow night!" "See you at Sunday School, Pearl, and bring David with you! Some sheik! Oh, Mama! But watch out for that baby-faced orphan, Pearl! She's got her cap set for him and she'll beat your time, if you don't look out!"

Sally felt her face flame with shame and anger. Why did girls and boys have to be so nasty-minded, she asked herself on a sob. Why couldn't they let her and David be friends without thinking things like that?

Why, David was so-so wonderful! He wouldn't "look" at a frightened little girl from an orphans' home! No girl was good enough for David Nash, she told herself fiercely.

The next morning Pearl failed to entice David into going to church and Sunday School with her, and Sally was left alone to prepare the big Sunday dinner-Mrs. Carson having gone to church in spite of her Sat.u.r.day determination not to. David came smiling into the kitchen, immaculate in a white shirt and well-fitting gray flannel trousers, a book in his hand, a pipe in his mouth.

"Mind if I study out here on the kitchen-porch?" he asked Sally, his hazel eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with friendliness. "I like company and my garret room's hot as an inferno."

"I'd love to have you," Sally told him shyly. "I'll try not to make any noise with the cooking utensils."

"Oh, I don't mind noise," he laughed. "Fact is, I wish you'd sing. I'll bet you can sing like a bird. Your voice sings even when you're talking.

And any woman-" a delicate compliment that-"can work better when she's singing."

And so Sally sang. She sang Sunday School songs, because it was Sunday.

It was sweet to be alone in the kitchen, with David so near, his crisp, golden-brown head bent over his book, smoke spiraling lazily from his pipe. The old grandmother, looking very tiny and old-fashioned in rustling black taffeta, had gone to church, too, leading her middle-aged half-wit son by the hand. Benny had strained at his mother's hand, trying to get loose so that he could kiss Sally and show her his bright red necktie, at which the fingers of his free hand plucked excitedly. As she remembered those vacant, grinning eyes, that slack, grinning mouth, Sally's song changed to a heart-felt paean of thanksgiving:

"Count your blessings!

Name them one by one.

Count your many blessings- See what G.o.d hath done!"

Oh, she _was_ blessed! She had a good mind; sometimes she was pretty; she could dance and sing; children liked her-and David, David! Poor half-wit Benny, whose only blessings were a dim little old mother and a new red necktie! But wasn't a mother-even an old, old mother, whose own eyes were vague, such a big blessing that she made up for nearly everything else that G.o.d could give?

But she resolutely banished the ache in her heart-an ache that contracted it sharply every time she thought of the mother she had never known-and began to sing again:

"I think when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children as lambs to His fold-"

The opening and closing of the door startled her. David was there, smiling at her.

"Won't you sing 'Always' for me, Sally? It's a new song, just out. It goes something like this-" And he began to hum, breaking into words now and then: "I'll be loving you-always! Not for just an hour, not for just a day, not-"

"So this is why you wouldn't go to church with me!" a shrill voice, pa.s.sionate with anger, broke into the singing lesson.

They had not heard her, in their absorption in the song and in each other, but Pearl had come into the house through the front door, and was confronting them now in the doorway between dining room and kitchen.

"I thought you two were up to something!" she cried. "It's a good thing I came home when I did, or I reckon there wouldn't be any Sunday dinner.

Do you know why I came home, Sally Ford?" she demanded, advancing into the kitchen, her hands on her hips, her fingers digging spasmodically into the flesh that bulged under the silk.

"No," Sally gasped, retreating until she was halted by the kitchen table. "I'm cooking dinner, Pearl. It'll be ready on time-"

"Don't you 'Pearl' me!" the infuriated girl screamed. "You mealy-mouthed little hypocrite! I'll tell you why I came home! I couldn't find my diamond bar-pin that Papa gave me for a Christmas present last year, and I remembered when I was in Sunday School that I saw you stoop and pick up something in the parlor last night. You little thief! Give it back to me or I'll phone for the sheriff!"

Sally stared at Pearl, color draining out of her cheeks and out of her sapphire eyes, until she was a pale shadow of the girl who had been glowing and sparkling under the sun of David's affectionate interest.

"I haven't seen your diamond bar-pin, Pearl," she said at last. "Honest, I haven't!"

"You're lying! I saw you stoop and pick something up in front of the sofa last night. I was crazy not to think of my bar-pin then, but I remembered all right this morning, when it was gone off this dress, the same dress I was wearing last night. See, David!" she appealed shrilly to the boy, who was looking at her with narrowed eyes. "It was pinned right here! You can see where it was stuck in! Look!"

David said nothing, but a slow, odd smile curled his lips without reaching those level, narrowed eyes of his.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" Pearl screamed. "I won't _have_ you looking at me like that! Stop it!"

Slowly, his eyes not leaving Pearl's face for a moment, David thrust his right hand into his pocket. When he withdrew it, something lay on his palm-a narrow bar of filigreed white gold, set with a small, square-cut diamond. Still without speaking, he extended his hand slowly toward Pearl, but she drew back, her eyes popping with surprise and-yes, Sally was sure of it-fear.

"Where did you get that?" she gasped.

"Do you really want me to tell you?" David spoke at last, his voice queer and hard.

"No!" Pearl shuddered. "No! Does she-does _she_ know?"