“Why, Ruth!” gasped Helen. “You talk just as though the police were not looking for him.”
“Hush! we won’t tell everybody that,” advised Ruth. “Probably they will never discover him here, in any case. His crime is not so great in the eyes of the law.”
“I don’t believe he ever did it!” cried Helen.
“Neither do I. It seems to me,” Ruth said gravely, “that if he had helped those men commit the robbery, he would have gone away from Lumberton with them.”
“And he shows that he has no criminal friends, or he would not come so far—and all alone. Nor would he have been so forlorn and hungry, if he was willing to steal.”
Ruth wrote her letter, as she promised; and she thought a good deal about the boy they had seen at the cotton warehouse. Suppose Curly Smith should take up his wanderings from this place? Suppose the warehouseman, Mr. Jimson, should discharge him? The man had spoken in rather an unfeeling way of the “little, hungry Yank,” and Ruth did not know how good at heart the lanky, chin-whiskered man was.
She determined to do something to make it reasonably sure that Curly would remain on the Merredith plantation until she could hear from his grandmother. Possibly the trouble in Lumberton might be settled. If the railroad had not lost much money—provided it was really proved that Curly had recklessly helped the thieves—the matter might be straightened out if Mrs. Sadoc Smith would refund a portion of the money lost.
And by this time Ruth believed the boy’s grandmother might be willing to do just that. It was very natural for her to announce in the first flush of her anger and shame, that she would have nothing more to do with her grandson, but Ruth was quite sure she loved him devotedly, and that her heart would soon be yearning for his graceless self.
Besides, when Mrs. Smith read the letter Ruth wrote, she would know that the wandering boy was in trouble and in poverty. As Helen begged her, Ruth had written these facts “strong.” She had made out Curly’s case to be as pitiful as possible, and she hoped for results from Lumberton.
Suppose, however, if a forgiving letter came from Mrs. Sadoc Smith, Curly could not then be found at the warehouse on the river side? Ruth thought of this during the heat of the day, when the family at the Big House rested. That siesta after luncheon seemed necessary here, in the warm, moist climate of the river-lands. Ruth awoke about three o’clock, with an idea for action in Curly Smith’s case. She slipped out of the room without disturbing Helen.