Mr. Singleton bowed his head. It had never occurred to him in all those absent years that the child was being abused. How simply she had told her tale of suffering!
"But I'm fifteen now," she repeated gladly, "so I stand up, spread my feet like this"--she rose and suited the action to the words--"and Matty lays her on damn hard, too."
He covered his mouth with one thin hand, choked down a cough, and endeavored to change the subject.
"And school? Have you been to school?"
"Oh, yes!" assured the girl, sitting down again. "I went to school back in the hills. There were only five boys and me. There wasn't any girls. I wish there had been."
"You like girls, I imagine, then," said her father.
"Oh, yes, sir! Yes, indeed, sir! I often walk five miles to play a while with one. None of the mothers around Mottville Corners'll let their girls be with me. You see, this house has a bad name."
A deep crimson dyed the man's ashen skin. He made as if to speak, but Jinnie went on.
"Over in the Willow Creek settlement the kids are awful bad, but I get along with 'em fine, because I love 'em right out of being hellish."
She was gazing straight into her father's face in all sincerity, with no trace of embarrassment.
"You know Mrs. Barker, the housekeeper you left me with?" she demanded a little later. "Well, she died when I was ten. Matty stayed, thinking every day you'd come home. I suppose mebbe I did grow up sort of cussed, and I suppose everybody thinks I'm bad because I've only a nigger to live with, and no mother, not--not even you."
Singleton partly smothered an oath which lengthened itself into a groan, looked long at the slim young figure, then at the piquant face.
"Just lately I've been wanting some one of my own to love," she pursued. "I only had Milly and her cats. Then the letter come saying you'd be here--and I'm very glad."
The smile lighting her face and playing with the dimples in her cheeks made Thomas Singleton feel as if Heaven's breath had touched him.
"Do you care at all for me?" he asked gloomily.
There had come over him a desire that this winsome girl,--winsome in spite of her crudity,--would say she did. Wonder, love, sympathy, were alive in her eyes. Jinnie nodded her head.