“Any dinner yesterday?”
“An apple and some grapes I stole.”
“Whose boy are you?”
“Old Tom Billings's.”
“Why doesn't your father get you something to eat?”
“He does most days, but he's drunk now.”
“Hush, you must not!” said Elnora. “He's your father!”
“He's spent all the money to get drunk, too,” said the boy, “and Jimmy and Belle are both crying for breakfast. I'd a got out all right with an apple for myself, but I tried to get some for them and the dog got too close. Say, you can throw, can't you?”
“Yes,” admitted Elnora. She poured half the milk into the cup. “Drink this,” she said, holding it to him.
The boy gulped the milk and swore joyously, gripping the cup with shaking fingers.
“Hush!” cried Elnora. “That's dreadful!”
“What's dreadful?”
“To say such awful words.”
“Huh! pa says worser 'an that every breath he draws.”
Elnora saw that the child was older than she had thought. He might have been forty judging by his hard, unchildish expression.
“Do you want to be like your father?”
“No, I want to be like you. Couldn't a angel be prettier 'an you. Can I have more milk?”
Elnora emptied the flask. The boy drained the cup. He drew a breath of satisfaction as he gazed into her face.
“You wouldn't go off and leave your little boy, would you?” he asked.
“Did some one go away and leave you?”
“Yes, my mother went off and left me, and left Jimmy and Belle, too,” said the boy. “You wouldn't leave your little boy, would you?”
“No.”
The boy looked eagerly at the box. Elnora lifted a sandwich and uncovered the fried chicken. The boy gasped with delight.
“Say, I could eat the stuff in the glass and the other box and carry the bread and the chicken to Jimmy and Belle,” he offered.
Elnora silently uncovered the custard with preserved cherries on top and handed it and the spoon to the child. Never did food disappear faster. The salad went next, and a sandwich and half a chicken breast followed.
“I better leave the rest for Jimmy and Belle,” he said, “they're 'ist fightin' hungry.”
Elnora gave him the remainder of the carefully prepared lunch. The boy clutched it and ran with a sidewise hop like a wild thing. She covered the dishes and cup, polished the spoon, replaced it, and closed the case. She caught her breath in a tremulous laugh.
“If Aunt Margaret knew that, she'd never forgive me,” she said. “It seems as if secrecy is literally forced upon me, and I hate it. What shall I do for lunch? I'll have to sell my arrows and keep enough money for a restaurant sandwich.”
So she walked hurriedly into town, sold her points at a good price, deposited her funds, and went away with a neat little bank book and the note from the Limberlost carefully folded inside. Elnora passed down the hall that morning, and no one paid the slightest attention to her. The truth was she looked so like every one else that she was perfectly inconspicuous. But in the coat room there were members of her class. Surely no one intended it, but the whisper was too loud.
“Look at the girl from the Limberlost in the clothes that woman gave her!”
Elnora turned on them. “I beg your pardon,” she said unsteadily, “I couldn't help hearing that! No one gave me these clothes. I paid for them myself.”
Some one muttered, “Pardon me,” but incredulous faces greeted her.
Elnora felt driven. “Aunt Margaret selected them, and she meant to give them to me,” she explained, “but I wouldn't take them. I paid for them myself.” There was silence.
“Don't you believe me?” panted Elnora.
“Really, it is none of our affair,” said another girl. “Come on, let's go.”
Elnora stepped before the girl who had spoken. “You have made this your affair,” she said, “because you told a thing which was not true. No one gave me what I am wearing. I paid for my clothes myself with money I earned selling moths to the Bird Woman. I just came from the bank where I deposited what I did not use. Here is my credit.” Elnora drew out and offered the little red book. “Surely you will believe that,” she said.
“Why of course,” said the girl who first had spoken. “We met such a lovely woman in Brownlee's store, and she said she wanted our help to buy some things for a girl, and that's how we came to know.”
“Dear Aunt Margaret,” said Elnora, “it was like her to ask you. Isn't she splendid?”
“She is indeed,” chorused the girls. Elnora set down her lunch box and books, unpinned her hat, hanging it beside the others, and taking up the books she reached to set the box in its place and dropped it. With a little cry she snatched at it and caught the strap on top. That pulled from the fastening, the cover unrolled, the box fell away as far as it could, two porcelain lids rattled on the floor, and the one sandwich rolled like a cartwheel across the room. Elnora lifted a ghastly face. For once no one laughed. She stood an instant staring.
“It seems to be my luck to be crucified at every point of the compass,” she said at last. “First two days you thought I was a pauper, now you will think I'm a fraud. All of you will believe I bought an expensive box, and then was too poor to put anything but a restaurant sandwich in it. You must stop till I prove to you that I'm not.”
Elnora gathered up the lids, and kicked the sandwich into a corner.
“I had milk in that bottle, see! And custard in the cup. There was salad in the little box, fried chicken in the large one, and nut sandwiches in the tray. You can see the crumbs of all of them. A man set a dog on a child who was so starved he was stealing apples. I talked with him, and I thought I could bear hunger better, he was such a little boy, so I gave him my lunch, and got the sandwich at the restaurant.”
Elnora held out the box. The girls were laughing by that time. “You goose,” said one, “why didn't you give him the money, and save your lunch?”
“He was such a little fellow, and he really was hungry,” said Elnora. “I often go without anything to eat at noon in the fields and woods, and never think of it.”
She closed the box and set it beside the lunches of other country pupils. While her back was turned, into the room came the girl of her encounter on the first day, walked to the rack, and with an exclamation of approval took down Elnora's hat.
“Just the thing I have been wanting!” she said. “I never saw such beautiful quills in all my life. They match my new broadcloth to perfection. I've got to have that kind of quills for my hat. I never saw the like! Whose is it, and where did it come from?”
No one said a word, for Elnora's question, the reply, and her answer, had been repeated. Every one knew that the Limberlost girl had come out ahead and Sadie Reed had not been amiable, when the little flourish had been added to Elnora's name in the algebra class. Elnora's swift glance was pathetic, but no one helped her. Sadie Reed glanced from the hat to the faces around her and wondered.
“Why, this is the Freshman section, whose hat is it?” she asked again, this time impatiently.
“That's the tassel of the cornstock,” said Elnora with a forced laugh.
The response was genuine. Every one shouted. Sadie Reed blushed, but she laughed also.
“Well, it's