“My ma and pa is too sick to work,” Thurley added, determined to gain her point. “I got to get a doctor for them to-morrow. We was headin’ for a city, but we sort of run out of supplies—” She bit her underlip.
“Maybe you’d like a stewpan?” she coaxed of Betsey Pilrig.
Thurley tore inside the wagon to re-appear with a motley collection of flimsy tins, bent and battered from their long journey.
A titter ran around the crowd. With the courage born of despair Thurley threw back her head and cried out, “Well, then, if nobody wants to buy anything—I kin sing for our supper!”
“All right, you poor lamb,” Mrs. Prince Hawkins answered, “sing for us, and we’ll see that you get a good hot supper.”
Thurley’s father took his pipe out of his mouth again to say, “She kin sing, ma’am.”
So Thurley, mounting a step of the wagon, began “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms,” the sun shining on her dark head, lighting up unexpected glints of Titian red. A passing teamster paused to listen, and applauded when she had finished, and the circle of critics were awed and quiet. For the ragged child seemed to vanish; she was merely the instrument for the glorious voice unhampered by artificial notions. Thurley sang as she had always done, winning for the inefficient parents—“life’s sinking ships,” some one had called them—their food and keep.
“Sing us another, and you can stay another day,” Prince Hawkins called out as the applause ceased.
There was an old man and he had a wooden leg, He had no tobacco, nor tobacco could he beg. Another old man had a wooden box, And he always kept tobacco in the old tobacco box. Said the first old man, “Gimme a chew.” Said the second old man, “Durned if I do. Take my advice and save up your rocks And you’ll always have tobacco in the old tobacco box!”
“I know dozens,” she announced happily, as she hopped down on to the ground, “but, if you don’t mind, I’d rather have supper now and sing some more to-morrow.”
“Drive into that shed,” Prince Hawkins told her. “You come around to the kitchen—I guess your pa can unhitch, can’t he?”
Thurley laughed. “Dear, no—makes him cough—he’s got a pain in his side, too. I sang four songs in the last town for painkiller, but it didn’t do him any good—over there, pa, dear—I’ll be with you in a minnit.” She watched the rickety wagon creak towards the shed.