But Tommy had tasted freedom; he had had one blissful day unwashed, uncombed, and uncorrected.

"No," he declared stoutly; "I'm doin' to stay to this house and play wiv You're-a-peanut."

"Then," said Mary, with deep resignation, "the only thing for me to do is to try to clean things up."

When she went back into the house she untied her bundle and took out the remaining dollar.

"I'll be back soon," she said to Miss Hazy as she stepped over a basket of potatoes. "I'm just going over to Mrs. Wiggs's a minute."

She found her neighbor alone, getting supper. "Please, ma'am,"--she plunged into her subject at once,--"have any of your girls a dress for sale? I've got a dollar to buy it."

Mrs. Wiggs turned the girl around and surveyed her critically. "Well, I don't know as I blame you fer wantin' to git shut of that one. There ain't more 'n room enough fer one leg in that skirt, let alone two.

An' what was the sense in them big shiny b.u.t.tons?"

"I don't know as it makes much difference," said Lovey Mary, disconsolately; "I'm so ugly, nothing could make me look nice."

Mrs. Wiggs shook her by the shoulders good-naturedly. "Now, here," she said, "don't you go an' git sorry fer yerself! That's one thing I can't stand in n.o.body. There's always lots of other folks you kin be sorry fer 'stid of yerself. Ain't you proud you ain't got a harelip?

Why, that one thought is enough to keep me from ever gittin' sorry fer myself."

Mary laughed, and Mrs. Wiggs clapped her hands. "That's what yer face needs--smiles! I never see anything make such a difference. But now about the dress. Yes, indeed, Asia has got dresses to give 'way. She gits 'em from Mrs. Reddin'; her husband is Mr. Bob, Billy's boss. He's a newspaper editress an' rich as cream. Mrs. Reddin' is a fallen angel, if there ever was one on this earth. She sends all sorts of clothes to Asia, an' I warm 'em over an' boil 'em down till they're her size.

"Asia Minor!" she called to a girl who was coming in the door, "this here is Mary--Lovey Mary she calls herself, Miss Hazy's boarder. Have you got a dress you could give her?"

"I'm going to buy it," said Mary, immediately on the defensive. She did not want them to think for a moment that she was begging. She would show them that she had money, that she was just as good as they were.

"Well, maw," the other girl was saying in a drawling voice as she looked earnestly at Lovey Mary, "seems to me she'd look purtiest in my red dress. Her hair's so nice an' black an' her teeth so white, I 'low the red would look best."

Mrs. Wiggs gazed at her daughter with adoring eyes. "Ain't that the artis' stickin' out through her? Couldn't you tell she handles paints?

Up at the fact'ry she's got a fine job, paints flowers an' wreaths on to bath-tubs. Yes, indeed, this here red one is what you must have.

Keep your dollar, child; the dress never cost us a cent. Here's a nubia, too, you kin have; it'll look better than that little hat you had on last night. That little hat worried me; it looked like the stopper was too little fer the bottle. There now, take the things right home with you, an' tomorrow you an' Asia kin start off in style."

Lovey Mary, flushed with the intoxication of her first compliment, went back and tried on the dress. Miss Hazy got so interested that she forgot to get supper.

"You look so nice I never would 'a' knowed you in the world!" she declared. "You don't look picked, like you did in that other dress."

"That Wiggs girl said I looked nice in red," said Lovey Mary tentatively.

"You do, too," said Miss Hazy; "it keeps you from lookin' so corpsey.

I wisht you'd do somethin' with yer hair, though; it puts me in mind of snakes in them long black plaits."

All Lovey Mary needed was encouragement. She puffed her hair at the top and sides and tucked it up in the latest fashion. Tommy, coming in at the door, did not recognize her. She laughed delightedly.

"Do I look so different?"

"I should say you do," said Miss Hazy, admiringly, as she spread a newspaper for a table-cloth. "I never seen no one answer to primpin'

like you do."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She puffed her hair at the top and sides."]

When it was quite dark Lovey Mary rolled something in a bundle and crept out of the house. After glancing cautiously up and down the tracks she made her way to the pond on the commons and dropped her bundle into the shallow water.

Next day, when Mrs. Schultz's goat died of convulsions, n.o.body knew it was due to the china b.u.t.tons on Lovey Mary's gingham dress.

CHAPTER IV

AN ACCIDENT AND AN INCIDENT

"Our deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we are."

Through the a.s.sistance of Asia Wiggs, Lovey Mary secured pleasant and profitable work at the factory; but her mind was not at peace. Of course it was a joy to wear the red dress and arrange her hair a different way each morning, but there was a queer, restless little feeling in her heart that spoiled even the satisfaction of looking like other girls and earning three dollars a week. The very fact that n.o.body took her to task, that n.o.body scolded or blamed her, caused her to ask herself disturbing questions. Secret perplexity had the same effect upon her that it has upon many who are older and wiser: it made her cross.

Two days after she started to work, Asia, coming down from the decorating-room for lunch, found her in fiery dispute with a red- haired girl. There had been an accident in front of the factory, and the details were under discussion.

"Well, I know all about it," declared the red-haired girl, excitedly, "'cause my sister was the first one that got to her."

"Is your sister a n.i.g.g.e.r named Jim Brown?" asked Lovey Mary, derisively. "Ever'body says he was the first one got there."

"Was there blood on her head?" asked Asia, trying to stem the tide of argument.

"Yes, indeed," said the first speaker; "on her head an' on her hands, too. I hanged on the steps when they was puttin' her in the ambalance- wagon, an' she never knowed a bloomin' thing!"

"Why didn't you go on with them to the hospital!" asked Lovey Mary. "I don't see how the doctors could get along without you."

"Oh, you're just mad 'cause you didn't see her. She was awful pretty!

Had on a black hat with a white feather in it, but it got in the mud.

They say she had a letter in her pocket with her name on it."

"I thought maybe she come to long enough to tell you her name," teased her tormentor.

"Well, I do know it, Smarty," retorted the other, sharply: "it's Miss Kate Rider."

Meanwhile in the Cabbage Patch Miss Hazy and Mrs. Wiggs were holding a consultation over the fence.

"She come over to my house first," Mrs. Wiggs was saying, dramatically ill.u.s.trating her remarks with two tin cans. "This is me here, an' I looks up an' seen the old lady standin' over there. She put me in mind of a graven image. She had on a sorter gray mournin', didn't she, Miss Hazy?"

"Yes, 'm; that was the way it struck me. Bein' gray, I 'lowed it was fer some one she didn't keer fer pertickler."

"An' gent's cuffs," continued Mrs. Wiggs; "I noticed them right off.

"Scuse me,' says she, snappin' her mouth open an' shut like a trap-- "scuse me, but have you seen anything of two strange children in this neighborhood?' I th'owed my ap.r.o.n over Lovey Mary's hat, that I was trimmin'. I wasn't goin' to tell till I found out what that widder woman was after. But before I was called upon to answer, Tommy come tearin' round the house chasin' Cusmoodle."

"Who?"

"Cusmoodle, the duck. I named it this mornin'. Well, when the lady seen Tommy she started up, then she set down ag'in, holdin' her skirts up all the time to keep 'em from techin' the floor. 'How'd they git here?' she ast, so relieved-like that I thought she must be kin to 'em. So I up an' told her all I knew. I told her if she wanted to find out anything about us she could ast Mrs. Reddin' over at Terrace Park.

'Mrs. Robert Reddin'?' says she, lookin' dumfounded. 'Yes,' says I, 'the finest lady, rich or poor, in Kentucky, unless it's her husband.'

Then she went on an' ast me goin' on a hunderd questions 'bout all of us an' all of you all, an' 'bout the factory. She even ast me where we got our water at, an' if you kept yer house healthy. I told her Lovey Mary had made Chris carry out more 'n a wheelbarrow full of dirt ever'