Winnie Childs | Page 9

something about yourself."
"There isn't anything interesting to tell, thank you, Mr. Rolls."
"If that's your only reason, I think you might let me judge. Honestly, I
don't want to intrude or be curious. But you're so different from the
others."
"I know I'm not pretty. That's why I have to be so painfully sweet. I got
the engagement only by a few extra inches. Luckily it isn't the face
matters so much," she chattered on. "I thought it was. But it's legs; their
being long; Mme. Nadine engages on that and your figure being right
for the dresses of the year. So many pretty girls come in short or odd
lengths, you find, when they have to be measured by the yard, at
bargain price."
Peter laughed.
"You're not meant to laugh there," she said. "It's a solemn fact."
"But you always laugh."
"That's because I'm what you'd call 'up against' life. It gives me such a
funny point of view."
"That's part of what I want to talk about. Please don't keep trying to
turn the subject. Unless you think I have no business seizing the first
chance when I find you alone, to---"

"It isn't that," said Win. "I think you're very kind to take the slightest
interest. But really there is nothing to tell. Just the usual sort of thing."
"It doesn't seem exactly usual to me for a girl about nineteen years
old--"
"Twenty!"
"--to be leaving home alone and starting for a new country."
"Not alone. Mme. Nadine might be furious if she were spoken of as my
chaperon; but she is, all the same. Not that an emigrant needs a
chaperon."
"You an emigrant!"
"Well, what else am I?"
"I've been thinking of you as a dryad."
"A poor, drenched dryad, thousands of miles from her native woods.
Do you know, my veil is soaked?"
"I'll get you a sou'wester hat to-morrow."
"Does the barber keep them as well as Balm of Gilead?"
"No, but my sister does. She keeps one. And she doesn't want it. I shall
annex it."
"Oh! I couldn't take it!"
"If you don't, I'll throw it overboard."
"Were the chocolates hers?"
"Yes."
"And the books?"

"Some were mine. But not the ones Miss Devereux says are pretty.
Look here, Miss Child, another thing she says is that you are not with
Nadine as a permanence. What does that mean, if you don't much mind
my asking?"
"Not what you think. I'm not going to be discharged. I was engaged
only for the voyage, to take the place of a prettier girl with still longer
legs who fell through at the last moment--literally. She stepped into one
of those gas-hole places in the street. And I stepped into her
shoes--lucky shoes!--sort of seven-league ones, bringing me across the
sea, all the way to New York free, for nothing. No! I hope not for
nothing. I hope it is to make my fortune."
"I hope so, too," said Peter gravely. "Got any friends there besides
me?"
"Thanks for putting it so, Mr. Balm of Gilead. Why, I've heard that
everybody in America is ready to be a friend to lonely strangers!"
"I guess your informant was almost too much of an optimist. Couldn't
you be serious for just a minute? You know, I feel quite well
acquainted with you--and the others, of course. But they are different.
And they are 'permanences' with Nadine. That's the kind of thing
they're fit for. I don't worry about them, and I shan't worry about you,
either, if you tell me you have friends or know what you are going to
do when you land."
"I can't tell you that," Win answered in a changed tone, as if suddenly
she were weary of trying to "frivol." "But I have hopes; and I have two
letters of introduction and a respectable, recommended boarding-house
and a little money left, so I really believe I shall be all right, thank you.
My people thought my wanting to come showed 'my wild spirit,' so I'm
anxious to prove as soon as I can--not to them any more, but to
myself--that I can live my own life in a new world without coming to
grief."
"Why not prove to them any more?"

"Oh--because no one is going to care much. As I said, my native woods
are far behind, and most of the trees are cut down. Not a dryad of the
true dryad family left, and this one is practically forgotten already. Her
niche was all grown over with new bark long ago, so it was more than
time she ceased to haunt the place."
"I'm afraid you've had a great sorrow," said Peter.
"It was hardly big enough for that word--this thing that's sent me
seeking my fortune--though it began