The Under Dog | Page 8

o'clock. Then you'd better have someone to look after her. No, you needn't go back and see her"--this in answer to a movement I made toward the prison door. "I'll fix everything. Mr. Marny knows me."
I thanked the Sergeant, and we started for the air outside--something we could breathe, something with a sky overhead and the dear earth underfoot, something the sun warmed and the free wind cooled.
Only one thing troubled me now. I could not take the girl to the train myself, neither could Marny, for I had promised to lecture that same night for the Art Club at eight o'clock, and Marny was to introduce me. The railroad station was three miles away.
"I've got it!" cried Marny, when we touched the sidewalk, elbowing our way among the crowd of loafers who always swarm about a place of this kind. (He was as much absorbed in the girl's future, when he heard her story, as I was.) "Aunt Chloe lives within two blocks of us--let's hunt her up. She ought to be at home by this time."
The old woman was just entering her street door when she heard Marny's voice, her basket on her arm, a rabbit-skin tippet about her neck.
"Dat I will, honey," she answered, positively, when the case was laid before her. "_Dat I will_; 'deed an' double I will."
She stepped into the house, left her basket, joined us again on the sidewalk, and walked with us back to the Sheriff's office.
"All right," said the Sergeant, when we brought her in. "Yes, I know the old woman; the gal will be ready for her when she comes, but I guess I'd better send one of my men along with 'em both far as the depot. Ain't no use takin' no chances."
The dear old woman followed us again until we found a clerk in a branch ticket-office, who picked out a long green slip from a library of tickets, punched it with the greatest care with a pair of steel nippers, and slipped it into an official envelope labelled: "K.C. Pineyville, Ky. 8 P.M."
With this tightly grasped in her wrinkled brown hand, together with another package of Marny's many times in excess of the stage fare of thirty-six miles and which she slipped into her capacious bosom, Aunt Chloe "made her manners" with the slightest dip of a courtesy and left us with the remark:
"Sha'n't nothin' tech her, honey; gwinter stick right close to her till de steam-cars git to movin', I'll be over early in de mawnin' an' let ye know. Doan' worry, honey; ain't nothin' gwinter happen to her arter I gits my han's on her."
When I came down to breakfast, Aunt Chloe was waiting for me in the hall. She looked like the old woman in the fairy-tale in her short black dress that came to her shoe-tops, snow-white apron and headkerchief, covered by a close-fitting nun-like hood--only the edge of the handkerchief showed--making her seem the old black saint that she was. It not being one of her cleaning-days, she had "kind o' spruced herself up a li'l mite," she said. She carried her basket, covered now with a white starched napkin instead of the red-and-yellow bandanna of work-days. No one ever knew what this basket contained. "Her luncheon," some of the art-students said; but if it did, no one had ever seen her eat it. "Someone else's luncheon," Marny added; "some sick body whom she looks after. There are dozens of them."
"Larrovers fur meddlins," Aunt Chloe invariably answered those whose curiosity got the better of their discretion--an explanation which only deepened the mystery, no one being able to translate it.
"She's safe, honey!" Aunt Chloe cried, when she caught sight of me. "I toted de baby, an' she toted de box. Po' li'l chinkapin! Mos' break a body's heart to see it! 'Clar to goodness, dat chile's leg warn't bigger'n a drumstick picked to de bone. De man de Sheriff sent wid us didn't go no furder dan de gate, an' when he lef us dey all sneaked in an' did dere bes' ter git her from me. Wuss-lookin' harum-scarums you ever see. Kep' a-tellin' her de ticket was good for ten days an' dey'd go wid her back to town; an' dat if she'd stay dey'd take her 'cross de ribber to see de city. I seed she wanted ter git home to her husban', an' she tol' 'em so. Den dey tried to make her believe he was comin' for her, an' dey pestered her so an' got her so mixed up wid deir lies dat I was feared she was gwine to give in, arter all. She warn't nothin' but a po' weak thing noways. Den I riz up an' tol' 'em dat I'd call a pleeceman an' take dat ticket