The Mystery at Number Six | Page 8

embarrassed pause ensued while she stood there, staring down at it, plainly at an utter loss how to proceed with the amenities. It was Bernice who came to her rescue.
"May I open it for you?" she asked, and took the package from the girl's unresisting hands. Removing the wrapper, she had a sudden inspiration, took off the cover, popped one of the candies into the girl's open mouth, placed one in her own, and passed the box around the room to all the others. It was decidedly "not according to Hoyle" but it worked. Miraculously the ice was broken. A delighted smile overspread the faces of the girl and the woman. Even old Jerry relaxed into what passed for a pleased grin.
"My! ain't them things good!" commented the woman, and Bernice promptly passed her another. In a moment they were all munching contentedly and the woman was telling how she "hadn't had no candy sence she left her home two months ago." Sydney then thought he'd try his hand at drawing out Jerry and began on a series of animated questions about the Everglades. But Jerry was either no conversationalist or he did not feel communicative that day, for not a word could the boy draw from him. Nods and grunts, affirmative or negative, he granted, but not another expression issued from behind his solemn beard. At last the boy gave it up in despair and the two visitors rose and took their departure. No one asked them to come again except the woman who was plainly trying to make up for the deficiency in affability of her lord and master.
"He's got the misery in his back to-day," she explained. "He's often took that way. That's why he can't live in them swamps no more." The girl seemed to have faded imperceptibly into the background and was nowhere to be seen when they left. But down by the edge of the pool and well out of sight of the house they were suddenly arrested by her figure, rising up unexpectedly from a big scrub-palmetto clump.
"Wait!" she said. "Don't talk too loud, please." And she glanced over her shoulder back at the cottage. "I--I want to--to thank you again for--the candy!"
"Oh, the thanks are all on my side!" exclaimed Syd gallantly. "If it hadn't been for you I might have been in pretty bad shape. The doctor said you made a splendid job of it--left very little for him to do."
"I'm glad," she said simply, then hurried on. "But I want to say something else. I don't want them to know--they mightn't like it, but--I--I wish you would come often--both of you. I--I'm lonesome!" She stopped abruptly as if frightened at having said so much.
"Why, of course we'll come!" declared Bernice impulsively. "We'll come every time we can manage it and we'll take you out in the car for rides sometimes, if you care to go."
"Oh, no, no!" the girl protested in quite inexplicable panic. "I can't do that. They--they wouldn't like it."
"But why not?" demanded Bernice indignantly. "It's perfectly safe. Sydney is a splendid driver."
"It--isn't that. They--they don't care for me to see many people."
Bernice stared at her in amazed incredulity. "But--pardon me!--may I ask why? What possible harm can there be in it?"
The girl became very much embarrassed. "It is--is hard to explain,--I know. I--I just can't explain it, I'm afraid. But if--they think I am seeing any--any outsiders much, they will move away again--to some place that is farther off from--people."
"I can't understand it!" cried Bernice. But Sydney interposed: "Well, never mind if you can't. That's not our affair. But we'll come whenever we can, anyway. How shall we manage it, though, if we're not to let--er--Mr. Saw-Grass and his wife know of our visits?" He turned questioningly to the girl.
"If you'll leave the car a good ways off--in the brush, and never come over this side of the pool, it'll be all right. Don't try to call me or signal to me--in any way. I'll be over there a part of every day. I'll always see you."
"But won't they--the--er--I mean your father and his wife--ever come over on this side?" questioned Sydney.
An indignant flush spread under the girl's dark skin.
"He--he isn't--that is, I call him Uncle Jerry," she retorted. "No, they will not go over that side. The truth is he has some kind of disease. I don't know what it is--the hookworm, perhaps,--though he sees an old doctor up this way sometimes and he says it isn't the hook-worm. Anyhow, he can't live in the Everglades any more and he can't get around much. And she"--an expression of faint contempt appeared in her face for an instant,--"she--takes snuff and is very lazy. She never goes out of the house or beyond the yard and garden if