"Yes'm, eaten."

"I do hope you aren't going to be careless in the way you talk, Tom. I hope you haven't learned a lot of new slang."

"Yes'm."

"You look well, anyway!" Hertha said, surveying him carefully.

She was pleased not only at his good health, but at the way he dressed, the evident care he had taken to be neat and cleanly. Her pride in him grew for she could see that he had improved as he had taken on responsibility. Evidently it had thus far worked well for him to break loose from his women folk and school and to shift for himself.

"What you doing, Hertha?" Tom questioned.

She told him a little of her life, her pleasant room upstairs, her work at stenography. But she preferred to listen, and before long he was again the chief talker, retailing every bit of news, no matter how trivial, that had come in the letters from home. Her eagerness was so evident, and her happiness in seeing him so apparent, that Tom wondered to himself why she had never given them the chance to communicate with her during the months she had been away. As though she sensed his question she said, hesitating, the blood rushing to her cheeks:

"You mustn't think I didn't want to hear from everybody; I did so much.

And I sent them cards at Christmas that I was well. Were you at school then?"

For answer he drew from his pocket her gift, and spun the top a moment on his sleeve when it fell to the floor. Hertha picked it up as she had picked up so many of his toys and put it in his brown hand where it descended to his pocket again. She was standing now, looking into his face. "Mammy told me," she said, "not to try to live in two worlds, not until I was sure fixed in the new one and," shaking her head, "it takes a long time to get fixed. But that wasn't the only reason. If I'd written and they'd answered--it's such a little place, sometimes not half-a-dozen letters in the post office--why, every one in Merryvale would have known where I was."

She hesitated, blushing, but she had said enough. The look of anger on the boy's face recalled suddenly to her remembrance the Sunday that they had stopped on the porch of the great house and Lee Merryvale had tried to send Tom home alone. Did he guess the shame of the weeks after his departure, weeks that all her pride had not been able wholly to push from her memory? She shrank at his rough answer.

"You're right," he said. "I's glad you won't have nothing to do with that skunk."

There was a rush of feet on the kitchen stairs, and Bob surprised them both by plunging into the room.

"What are you doing up so late?" Hertha demanded, but Bob did not hear her.

"Miss Ogilvie," he said, all excitement, "the cook told me that Tom is here."

"Yes," Hertha answered, and then with a gesture of introduction, dropping into the phraseology of home said, "Bob, meet Tom."

The little boy showed a moment's surprise, then accepting the race of his hero, Tom-of-the-Woods, as a simple fact, asked eagerly, "Did you bring your top?"

Tom, surprised at this greeting, brought out the top again.

"Come along," Bob cried, and leading the way they all three went out of the house down the stoop.

"You must do awfully well," Hertha whispered as under the street lamp the hero of her story began slowly to wind his string.

"What you been giving him?" he asked, nodding to the little boy whose gleaming blue eyes and intense interest in the proceedings augured more than the mere pleasure in seeing a top spin.

"I've just been telling him a few things," she answered lightly.

She stood on the steps and watched with delight Tom's careful choice of the best spot on the pavement for his spin and smiled to see the two boy-faces, one so pink and white, the other so brown, each intent on the business in hand.

It was a queer trick. Despite the many times Hertha had seen it, she was never quite sure at what moment the top, spinning at a marvelous pace, was caught up by the spinner to disappear in his pocket. And if she felt the illusion, despite her familiarity with it, there was no question but that Bob in the dim light, looking for the miraculous, found it. He regarded Tom as a magician and only hoped for some new manifestation of his power when he straightened himself up and stood before them.

"I must go now," he said.

He looked up at Hertha who stood on the step above him.

"Tom," she said, trying to delay him, "do you go to church?"

"Of course!"

"To Siloam?"

"How'd you guess that?"

"It's the biggest church in town."

Tom smiled. "I reckon you know'd I wouldn't go to any but a big one while I was about it."

"And when you write home tell them all about me, won't you?"

"Yes."

"And we won't lose track of one another again."

He did not reply to this, but with a smile for her and a nod to Bob, walked with his slow, steady gait down the street. Hertha stood by her doorstep fearing to go farther, but Bob tore after his hero and with short, trotting steps that sometimes became a run, accompanied him to the street car, watching as he was carried away out of his sight.

When he came back he found Hertha standing just where he had left her.

"Say, Miss Ogilvie," he questioned, "is it staying in the woods so much makes him black?"

"Why do you ask!" Hertha said sharply; "don't you like him the way he is?"

"Oh, I don't care," Bob replied in a catholic spirit; and added meditatively: "In the Arabian Nights all the genii are black."

CHAPTER XXIX

There are some who make decisions with the sure swiftness of a sensitive film, one moment a blank, the next, by a flash of light, a picture, incisive and clear. Such people, though they may make their share of mistakes, lead on the whole a comfortable existence. But there are others who, like the southern girl occupying the second-story back-room of Mrs. Pickens' boarding-house, find it difficult to determine for themselves the course which they shall take. And to these who wander in the valley of indecision the right path to follow becomes daily more obscured. The more they question the more they are beset with obstacles, mists gather about them, and some have been known to wait in hesitancy, until, without having tasted of adventure, they find that their day is done.

Hertha, however difficult decision might be to her, had determined not to be in this latter group. When her school work was over, she had resolved to settle upon her future; but in the days that followed Tom's visit, when with her lover away there was a chance to stop and think, she had to confess to herself that the paths down which she looked were none of them to her liking. And yet she must apparently choose one of two alternatives or else after seven months of trial start in again with lessened fortune, without a profession and alone.

As she sat at her books late one afternoon, endeavoring to indite a business letter she looked up to find Miss Wood standing at her open door.

"Excuse me," Miss Wood said, "I know you are at work but I wanted to leave you some of my roses. One of our cases--a woman who got into trouble--brought them to me from the country to-day. She did the sensible thing (so few will) and went away with her child to work at domestic service; and now she can come in for the day and leave me something as lovely as this." And she held out a spray of rambler roses.

Hertha took the gift with a shy word of thanks, and after placing the flowers in water invited Miss Wood to sit down.

"No, I'm not going to interrupt you," the older woman said.

"You aren't interrupting," Hertha answered. "Especially," she added, "as I want very much to ask your advice."

To be asked to a.s.sume the role of adviser is the most subtle of compliments; and Miss Wood, while murmuring that she feared she would be of little use, took Hertha's rocking-chair by the window and proceeded to look self-conscious, as though she might thus exude wisdom.