"Here, Chip, come on and I'll teach you."
She came on. I can still feel her soft determined clutch on my elbow. When I said, "That's enough," she said, "Thank you, Boy," and went quietly on alone.
After that I taught her many times. One afternoon when there was a thaw, I said,
"Gee, but this ice is rotten." And then Eleanore asked me placidly,
"What's that got to do with it?" I demanded indignantly.
This girl was full of mysteries. One great point in her favor was that she had a mother "at death's door." This appealed to me tremendously. It was so unusual.
"How's your mother?" I would ask her often, just for the pleasure of hearing her answer softly,
She soon learned to skate much better, and I remember quite vividly still the January afternoon when as the darkness deepened a silvery moon appeared overhead. I had not skated with her for a week, but now we'd been skating for nearly an hour. One by one the others went home, and the plump girl turned at the kitchen door to call back to Eleanore tauntingly,
"Never mind," said a gentle voice at my side, and round and round we skated. The moon grew steadily brighter. Still that soft steady clutch on my arm.
"Now you'd better go home," I said gruffly at last.
"What time is it?" she asked me. I looked at my watch.
"What a pretty watch that is," she said in a pleased, quiet voice, but I was not to be diverted.
"Go on home, I tell you. Sit down and I'll take off your skates." She sighed regretfully but obeyed.
"What'll they do to you?" I asked her when we stopped in front of her house.
"They'll try to punish me," she answered. I looked down at her anxiously.
"Then they won't punish me," she said. "My father always comes home at seven." And she went placidly into the house.
I had told her a little about the docks, and one day she asked me to take her there. I promptly refused, but patiently from time to time she repeated her request. She wanted me to take her "just for a little walk" down there, or she would run if I preferred. She wanted to come out after supper into her garden, which was only the third from ours, and then she would sing and I would whistle. Then I would come around by the street and she would meet me at her front gate. I don't know how she ever persuaded me, but she did, and the plan worked splendidly. At the gate without a word I took her hand and ran down the street. Soon we were flying. Down to the open space we came, and around across the railroad tracks. In and out among grimy freight cars we sped. I would not stop.