"Farmers don't see the pretty side; they're too busy. And too worried,"

David told her gravely. "I'm different. I live in the city in the winter and I can hardly wait to get to the farm in the summer. But it's not my worry if the summer is wet and the wheat rusts. I'll be happy to own a piece of land some day, though, even if I own all the worries, too. I'm going to be a scientific farmer, you know."

"I'd love to live on a farm," Sally agreed, with entire innocence. "But every evening at twilight I'd go out and look at my growing things and see how pretty a picture they made, and try to forget all the back-breaking work I'd put in to make it so pretty."

They were walking single file now, in the soft, mealy loam of a field, David leading the way. She loved the way his tall, compact body moved-as gracefully and surely as a woman's. She had the feeling that they were two children, who had slipped away from their elders. She had never known anyone like David, but she felt as if she had known him all her life, as if she could say anything to him and he would understand. Oh, it was delicious to have a friend!

"There's the cornfield where I've been plowing," David called back to her. "A fine crop. I've given it its last plowing this week. It's what farmers call 'laid by.' Nothing to do now but to let nature take her course."

It was so dark now that the corn looked like glistening black swords, curved by invisible hands for a phantom combat. And the breeze rustled through them, bringing to the beauty-drunk little girl a cargo of mingled odors of earth, ripe fruit and greenness thrusting up from the moist embrace of the ground to the kiss of the sun.

"Let's sit here on the ground and watch the moon come up," David suggested, his voice hushed with the wonder of the night and of the beauty that lay about them. "The earth is soft, and dry from the sun. It won't soil your pretty dress."

Sally obeyed, locking her slender knees with her hands and resting her chin upon them.

"Tired, Sally? They work you too hard," David said softly, as he seated himself at a little distance from her. "I suppose you'll be glad to get back to the-Home in the fall."

Sally's dream-filled eyes, barely discernible in the dark, turned toward him, and her voice, hushed but determined, spoke the words that had been throbbing in her brain for four days:

"I'm not going back to the Home-ever. I'm going to run away."

"Good for you!" David applauded. Then, with sudden seriousness: "But what will you do? A girl alone, like you? And won't they try to bring you back? Isn't there a law that will let them hunt you like a criminal?"

"Oh, yes. The state's my legal guardian until I'm eighteen, and I'm only sixteen. In some states it's twenty-one," Sally answered, fright creeping back into her voice. "But I'm going to do it anyway. I'd rather die than go back to the orphanage for two more years. You don't know what it's like," she added with sudden vehemence, and a sob-catch in her throat.

"Tell me, Sally," David urged gently.

And Sally told him-in short, gasping sentences, roughened sometimes by tears-of the life of orphaned girls.

"We have enough to eat to keep from starving and they give us four new dresses a year," Sally went on recklessly, her long-dammed-up emotion released by his sympathy and understanding, though he said so little.

"And they don't actually beat us, unless we've done something pretty bad; but oh, it's the knowing that we're orphans and that the state takes care of us and that n.o.body cares whether we live or die that makes it so hard to bear! From the time we enter the orphanage we are made to feel that everyone else is better than we are, and it's not right for children, who will be men and women some day, with their livings to make, to feel that way!"

"Yes, an inferiority complex is a pretty bad handicap," David interrupted gently.

"I know about inferiority complexes," Sally took him up eagerly. "I've read a lot and studied a lot. We have a branch of the public library in the orphanage, but we're only allowed to take out one book a week. I'll graduate from high school next June-if I go back! But I won't go back!"

"But Sally, Sally, what could you do?" David persisted. "You haven't any money-"

"No," Sally acknowledged pa.s.sionately. "I've never had more than a nickel at one time to call my own! Think of it, David! A girl of sixteen, who has never had more than a nickel of her own in her life!

And only a nickel given to me by some soft-hearted, sentimental visitor!

But I can work, and if I can't find anything to do, I'd rather starve than go back."

David's hand, concealed by the darkness, was upon hers before she knew that it was coming.

"Poor Sally! Brave, high-hearted little Sally!" David said so gently that his words were like a caress. "Charity hasn't broken your spirit yet, child. Just try to be patient for a while longer. Promise me you won't do anything without telling me first. I might be able to help you-somehow."

"I-I can't promise, David," she confessed in a strangled voice. "I might have to go away-suddenly-from here-"

"What do you mean, Sally?" David's hand closed in a hurting grip over hers. "Has Pearl-Mr. Carson-? Tell me what you mean!"

"When I promised to come walking with you tonight I knew that Mr. Carson would try to take me back to the orphanage, if he found out. But-I-I wanted to come. And I'm not sorry."

"Do you mean that he threatened you?" David asked slowly, amazement dragging at his words. "Because of Pearl-and me?"

"Yes," she whispered, hanging her head with shame. "I didn't want you to know, ever, that you'd been in any way responsible. He-he says it's practically settled between you and-and Pearl, and that-that I-oh, don't make me say any more!"

David groaned. She could see the muscles spring out like cords along his jaw. "Listen, Sally," he said at last, very gently, "I want you to believe me when I say that I have never had the slightest intention of marrying Pearl Carson. I have not made love to her. I'm too young to get married. I've got two years of college ahead of me yet, but even if I were older and had a farm of my own, I wouldn't marry Pearl-"

CHAPTER IV

"Come out of that corn!" A loud, harsh voice cut across David's low-spoken speech, made them spring guiltily apart. "I ain't going to stand for no such goings-on on my farm!"

Clem Carson had prowled like an angry, frustrated animal, through the fields until he had spied them out.

David and Sally had been sitting at the end of the corn field, in plain sight of anyone who cared to spy upon them. When Clem Carson's harsh bellow startled them out of their innocent confidences David jumped to his feet, offering a hand to Sally, who was trembling so that she could scarcely stand.

"We're not in the corn, Mr. Carson," David called, his voice vibrating with indignation. "I'll have to ask you to apologize for what you said, sir. There's no harm in two young people watching the moon rise at ten o'clock."

Carson came striding out of the corn. David, feet planted rather far apart, looked as if he were braced for attack, and the farmer, after an involuntary shrinking toward the shelter of the corn, advanced again, an apologetic smile on his brown face.

"Reckon I spoke hasty," he conceded, "but Jim said he seen you two young-uns sneaking off into the corn and it got my dander up. I'm responsible to the orphanage for Sally, and I don't aim to have her going back in disgrace. Better get back to the house, Sally, and go to bed, seeing as how you've got to be up at half-past four in the morning.

You stay back a minute, Dave. I want to have a little talk with you."

"I'm taking Sally to the house, Mr. Carson," David said grimly.

On the walk back to the house there was no opportunity for David to rea.s.sure the frightened, trembling girl, for Carson plowed doggedly along behind them as they walked single file between the rows of corn.

When they reached the kitchen, where Mrs. Carson was setting great pans of yeast bread to rise on the back of the range, Sally ran to the stairs, not pausing for a good-night.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, while she was sitting on the edge of her cot-bed, she heard David's firm step on the back stairs, and knew that he had cut short the farmer's "little talk" with him. Reckless of consequences she slipped out of her door, which she had left ajar, and crept along the dark hall to David's door.

He did not see her at first, for she was only a faint blur in the dark, but at her whispered "David!" he paused, his hands groping for hers.

"It's all right, honey," he whispered. "I told him point-blank if he sent you back to the Home I'd leave, too. And that will hold him, because he can't do without me at this busy season. He couldn't get another hand right now for love or money, and he knows it. Go to sleep now, and don't worry."

The next morning at breakfast it was plainly evident that David had said one or two other things to Clem Carson, and that he in turn had pa.s.sed them on to Pearl. For Pearl's eyes bore traces of tears shed during the night, and the high color of anger burned in her plump cheeks. Carson's anger and chagrin at losing all his hopes of David as a son-in-law and of acquiring, through his marriage to Pearl, the neighboring farm for his daughter, expressed itself in heavy "joshing," each word tipped with venom:

"Well, well, how's our Sally this morning? What do you know about this, Ma?-our little 'Orphunt Annie' is stepping out! Yes, sir, she ain't letting no gra.s.s grow under her feet! Caught herself a feller, she has!"

"Eat your breakfast, Clem, and let Sally alone," Mrs. Carson commanded impatiently. "She's old enough to have a feller if she wants one."

Tears of grat.i.tude to the woman she had thought so stern gushed into Sally's eyes, so that she could not see to b.u.t.ter the hot biscuit she held in her shaking hands.

"She's cut you out, Pearl, beat your time all hollow! And looking as meek and mild as a Jersey heifer all the time! I tell you, Ma, it takes these b.u.t.tery-mouthed little angels to put over the high-jinks!"

"I'm sure I wouldn't have looked at a hired man," Pearl cried angrily, tossing her head. "Sally's welcome to him. But I can't say I admire _his_ taste."