CHAPTER X.

GRANNY.

There was some constraint upon them both at first; and Max had had time to feel a momentary regret that he had been foolish enough to stay, when he was surprised to find the girl's eyes staring fixedly at a small parcel which he had taken from his coat-tail pocket and placed upon the table.

It was a paper of biscuits which he had brought from the public-house.

He had forgotten them till that moment.

"I brought these for you--" he began.

And then, before he could add more, he was shocked by the avidity with which she almost s.n.a.t.c.hed them from his hand.

"I--I'd forgotten!" stammered he.

It was an awful sight. The girl was hungry, ravenously hungry, and he had been chatting to her and talking about kisses when she was starving!

There was again a faint spot of color in her cheeks, as she turned her back to him and crouched on the hearth with the food.

"Don't look at me," she said, half laughing, half ashamed. "I suppose you've never been without food for two days!"

Max could not at first answer. He sat in one of the wooden chairs, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, calling himself, mentally, all sorts of things for his idiotic forgetfulness.

"And to think," said he, at last, in a hoa.r.s.e and not over-steady-voice, "that I dared to compare myself to a knight-errant!"

The biscuits were disappearing rapidly. Presently she turned and let him see her face again.

"Perhaps," suggested she, still with her mouth full, "as you say, one didn't hear quite all about those gentlemen. Perhaps they forgot things sometimes. And perhaps," she added, with a most gracious change to grat.i.tude and kindness, "they weren't half so sorry when they forgot as you are."

Max listened in fresh amazement. Where on earth had this child of the slums, in the cheap-stuff frock and clumsy shoes, got her education, her refinement? Her talk was not so very different from that of the West-End dinner-tables she had laughed at. What did it mean?

"Do you really feel so grateful for the little I have done?" he asked suddenly.

The girl drew a long breath.

"I don't dare to tell you _how_ grateful."

"Well, then, will you tell me all about yourself? I'm getting more puzzled every moment. I hope it isn't rude to say so, but--you and this place don't _fit_."

For a moment the girl did not answer. Then she put the paper which had held the biscuits carefully into the cupboard by the fireplace, and as she did so he saw her raise her shoulders with an involuntary and expressive shrug.

"I suppose it is rather surprising," she said at last, as she folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes fixed upon the red heart of the fire.

"It surprises me sometimes."

There was a pause, but Max would not interrupt her, for he thought from her manner that an explanation of some sort was coming. At last she went on, raising her head a little, but without looking at him:

"And very likely it will astonish you still more to hear that in coming to this place I made a change for the better."

Max was too much surprised to make any comment.

"If you want to know my name, date of birth, parentage and the rest of it," went on the girl, in a tone of half-playful recklessness, "why, I have no details to give you. I don't know anything about myself, and n.o.body I know seems to know any more. Granny says she does, but I don't believe her."

She paused.

"Why, surely," began Max, "your own grandmother--"

"But I don't even know that she is my own grandmother," interrupted the girl, sharply. "If she were, wouldn't she know my name?"

"That seems probable, certainly."

"Well, she doesn't, or she says she doesn't. She pretends she has forgotten, or puts me off when I ask questions, though any one can understand my asking them."

This was puzzling, certainly. Max had no satisfactory explanation to offer, so he shook his head and tried to look wise. As long as she would go on talking, and about herself, too, he didn't care what she said.

"What does she call you?" asked he, after a silence.

"Carrie--Carrie Rivers. But the 'Rivers' is not my name, I know. It was given me by Miss Aldridge, who brought me up, and she told me it wasn't my real name, but that she gave it to me because it was 'proper to have one.' So how can I believe Granny when she says that it is not my name?

Or at least that she has forgotten whether I had any other? If she had really forgotten all that, wouldn't she have forgotten my existence altogether, and not have taken the trouble to hunt me out, and to take me away from the place where she found me?"

"Where was that?" asked Max.

The girl hung her head, and answered in a lower voice, as if her reply were a distasteful, discreditable admission:

"I was bookkeeper at a hotel--a wretched place, where I was miserable, very miserable."

Max was more puzzled than ever.

Every fresh detail about herself and her life made him wonder the more why she was refined, educated. Presently she looked up, and caught the expression on his face.

"That was after Miss Aldridge died," she said, with a sigh. "I had lived with her ever since I was a little girl. I can hardly remember anything before that--except--some things, little things, which I would rather forget." And her face clouded again. "She was a very old lady, who had been rich once, and poor after that. She had kept a school before she had me; and after that, I was the school. I had to do all the learning of a schoolful. Do you see?"

"Ah," said Max, "_now_ I understand! And didn't she ever let you know who placed you with her?"

"She said it was my grandmother," answered Carrie, doubtfully.

"This grandmother? The one you call Granny?"

"I don't know. You see, Mrs. Higgs never turned up till about ten months ago, long after Miss Aldridge had died. She died the Christmas before last."

"And how did you get to the hotel?"

"I had to do something. Miss Aldridge had only her annuity. I had done everything for her, except the very hardest work, that she wouldn't let me do; and when she died, suddenly, I had to find some way of living.

And somebody knew of the hotel. So I went."

"Where was it?"