“You ain’t so keen on dividin’ up, eh?”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” returned Lucy quickly. “I was only thinking what a lot you had to do. No wonder you sent for me.”

It was a random remark, but it struck Ellen’s conscience with such aplomb that she flushed, dismayed.

“What do you mean?” she faltered.

As Lucy looked at her aunt, she observed the shifting glance, the crafty smile, the nervous interlacing of the fingers.

“Mean?” she returned innocently. “Why, nothing, Aunt Ellen. We must all work for a living one way or another, I suppose. If I prefer to stay here with you and earn my board there is no disgrace in it, is there?”

“No.”

Nevertheless Ellen was obviously disconcerted. There was an uncanny quality in Lucy that left her with a sense that every 56 hiding place in her heart was laid bare. Were the girl’s ingenuous observations as ingenuous as they seemed? Or were they the result of an abnormal intuition, a superhuman power for fathoming the souls of others?

56

Eager to escape the youthful seer, the woman pushed back her chair and rose.

“I must go out an’ see what that boy Tony’s up to,” she said. “While I’m gone you might tidy up round here a bit. There’s the dishes an’ the beds; an’ in the pantry you’ll find the eggs with the cases to pack ’em in. An’ if you get round to it you might sweep up the sittin’ room.”

“All right.”

Drawing on a worn coat Ellen moved toward the door; when, however, her hand was on the knob, she turned and called over her shoulder:

“The washin’s soakin’ in the tubs in the shed. You can hang it out if you like.”

Lucy waited until she saw the angular figure wend its way to the barn. Then she broke into a laugh.

“The old fox! She did get me here to work for her,” she murmured aloud. “Anyway, I don’t have to stay unless I like; and I shan’t, 57 either. So, Aunt Ellen Webster, you’d better be careful how you treat me.”

57

With a defiant shake of her miniature fist in the direction her aunt had taken, Lucy turned to attack the duties 

 Prev. P 31/163 next