, despite
the oppressive heat of the evening. "I wish you wouldn't speak of it to
me any more; and I can't go walking with you this way. I have obliged to
help Aunt Mavity; and every minute of time I get from that, and my work,
I'm putting in on my books and reading."

She stepped ahead of him now, and Buckheath regarded her back with
sullen, sombre eyes. What was he to do? How come nearer her when she
thus held herself aloof?

"Johnnie Consadine!" The girl checked her steps a bit at a new sound in
his voice. "I'll tell you just one thing, and you'd better never forget
it, neither. I ain't no fool. I know mighty well an' good your reason
for treating me this-a-way. Your reason's got a name. Hit's called Mr.
Gray Stoddard. You behave yo'self an' listen to reason, or I'll get even
with him for it. Damn him--I'll fix him!"

CHAPTER X

THE SANDALS OF JOY

"Come in here, Johnnie," Mavity Bence called one day, as Johnnie was
passing a strange little cluttered cubbyhole under the garret stairs and
out over the roof of the lean-to kitchen. It was a hybrid apartment,
between a large closet and a small room; one four-paned window gave
scant light and ventilation; all the broken or disused plunder about the
house was pitched into it, and in the middle sat a tumbled bed. It was
the woman's sleeping place and her dead daughter had shared it with her
during her lifetime. Johnnie stopped at the door with a hand on each
side of its frame.

"Reddin' up things, Aunt Mavity?" she asked, adding, "If I had time I'd
come in and help you."

"I was just puttin' away what I've got left that belonged to Lou," said
the woman, sitting suddenly down on the bed and gazing up into the
bright face above her with a sort of appeal. Johnnie noticed then that
Mrs. Bence had a pair of cheap slippers in her lap. It came back vividly
to the girl how the newspapers had said that Louvania Bence had taken
off her slippers and left them on the bridge, that she might climb the
netting more easily to throw herself into the water. The mother stared
down at these, dry-eyed.

"She never had 'em on but the once," Mavity Bence breathed. "And I--and
I r'ared out on her for buyin' of 'em. I said that with Pap so old and
all, we hadn't money to spend for slippers. Lord God!"--she
shivered--"We had to find money for the undertaker, when he come to
lay her out."

She turned to Johnnie feverishly, like a thing that writhes on the rack
and seeks an easier pos