Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/159

 too thin! Just hop into the cart with me and I'll set you down at Heaslip's. They'll be kind to you, too, and no one here will know that you're about, if that's what you want. What did you get fired for?"

"Mrs. Jessop turned against me. There's my trunk, too."

"Where?" He looked up and down the street.

"Henry was taking it to the station on the wheelbarrow."

"That's easy. We'll pass that way and get it. Hop in now, there's a good girl. You're just the girl for Heaslip's." He led the horse about, with the step of the cart invitingly before her.

Delight looked up and down the street. Factory folk were beginning to stir. Windows flamed in the upward slanting sunlight.

"I'll do it," she said. "Anything but sit in that station for hours and hours."

They found the trunk on the end of the platform. Boy and wheelbarrow had disappeared. Fergussen put the trunk before him in the cart and had to sit with his feet dangling. Delight nursed the basket in her lap. And then they jogged out of Brancepeth, the horse's feet splashing into sunlit puddles, the wind blowing Delight's hair all about her face, and throwing down green branches before her on the road. It was a wild, free morning, and, as they left the town behind, Delight began to feel happier in spite of herself and to ask the fishmonger questions about himself and his travels. She did not want to be questioned about her present misfortunes or her past life. If she were to speak of the little lodge in the great park in England where she had lived with Gran, she'd break down, she couldn't bear it.

They jogged on through a hilly, stony country of small