Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/74

70 blaming this kind young gentleman for my appearance," cried Rebecca, running past Spottswood up the steps and looking Major Taylor squarely in the eye and all but shaking her fist in his face. "I never saw him until last night, when I went to housekeeping with him on the sleeping car. He was good to me when I was lonesome, having just lost my last stepfather and no one left in the studio. He gave me his lower berth, too, not that I wanted it at all, except that it was kind of difficult to kneel down outside of an upper berth to say one's prayers, and Mrs. O'Shea has told me time and again it is not ladylike to hump up in bed and pray, and I saw no other way to do it. Thanks to Mr. Bolling, I was able to kneel quite devoutly in the aisle. I might just as well have saved my breath, as I was praying that whatever kinspeople I had left in Virginia would be glad to have me come and live with them."

Here Rebecca paused for breath and stood up very straight, her dark eyes flashing their scorn of whatever kinspeople she might have.

"I don't know whether you are my grandfather or not, and what's more, I don't care. In New York there is a home for stray cats and dogs and before they let anybody take one of them away to give it a home that person has to