Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/70

60 before I could board a Wabash train for the Falls, got me back the same as though I'd been a lifter in an up-state reformatory.

I went back, but it began to make me bitter toward Bud. I secretly accused him of trying to hand me a dose of his own medicine. I even wondered if he wasn't simply trying to save me for himself, if he wasn't merely maneuvering to keep me in pickle there until he could rope a reprieve and come and carry me off. For I seemed to be in a world of sleep-walkers. They were all so quiet-voiced and sedate and so far away from my busy old world of noise. It even took Sister Theresa three days to teach me how to sit down in a chair. I'd done it wrong, all my life, without knowing it. And I had to do without my face-powder, and cut out the slang, and learn how to pitch my voice and face lights-out at nine o'clock—at nine o'clock, and Little Me the night-owl who used to hit the hay when the milk-wagons were rattling up from the ferry-slips! There were a lot of other things I had to learn, though I didn't seem to know it at the time. There was a change taking place, though I couldn't see it.

It wasn't until Copperhead Kate came to see me at The Pines that I realized how great this change already was. She came heavily veiled, and dressed