"Yes'm," Sally gulped. "But I only brought two dresses--my every-day dress and this one. Mrs. Stone said you'd--you'd give me some of P-Pearl's."
She flushed painfully, in humiliation at having to accept charity and in doubt as to whether she was to address the daughter of the house by her Christian name, without a "handle."
Pearl, switching her short, lavender silk skirts insolently, led the way up a steep flight of narrow stairs leading directly off the kitchen to the garret. The roof, shaped to fit the gables of the house, was so low that Sally's head bumped itself twice on their passage of the dusty, dark corridor to the room she was to be allowed to call her own.
"No, not that door!" Pearl halted her sharply. "That's where David Nash, one of the hired men, sleeps."
Sally wanted to stop and lay her hand softly against the door which his hand had touched, but she did not dare. "I--I saw him," she faltered.
"Oh, you did, did you?" Pearl demanded sharply. "Well, let me tell you, young lady, you let David Nash alone. He's mine--see? He's not just an ordinary hired hand. He's working his way through State A. & M. He's a star, on the football team and everything. But don't you go trying any funny business on David, or I'll make you wish you hadn't!"
"I--I didn't even speak to him," Sally hastened to reassure Pearl, then hated herself for her humbleness.
"Here's your room. It's small, and it gets pretty hot in here in the summer, but I guess it's better'n you're used to, at that," Pearl Carson, a little mollified, swung open a flimsy pine door.
Sally looked about her timidly, her eyes taking in the low, sagging cot bed, the upturned pine box that served as washstand, the broken rocking chair, the rusty nails intended to take the place of a clothes closet; the faded, dirty rag rug on the warped boards of the floor; the tiny window, whose single sash swung inward and was fastened by a hook on the wall.
"I'll bring you some of my old dresses," Pearl told her. "But you'd better hurry and change into your orphanage dress, so's you can help Mama with the supper. She's been putting up raspberries all day and she's dead tired. I guess Papa told you you'd have to hustle this summer. This ain't a summer vacation--for you. It is for me. I go to school in the city in the winter. I'm second year high, and I'm only sixteen," she added proudly. "What are you?"