Free New Name by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

seen through the window going about the room.
    She stood there with a questioning look upon her face, and she had kind eyes—eyes like Mrs. Chapparelle’s— mother eyes. They looked into the darkness of the yard as if they were waiting for him, searching, expecting him, and he found his feet would go no further. They would not take the dash into the darkness of the shrubbery that his situation required. They just stopped and waited. It had been growing in his consciousness for some time that this thing would happen pretty soon, that he would stop and get caught, and he wondered almost apathetically what he would do then. Just wait, and let them do with him what they pleased?
    But Jane’s voice rang out triumphantly: “He’s come, Mrs. Summers. He didn’t get hurt after all. He came through all right. Isn’t that great? But he’s all messed up, and he wants to clean up. I told him I was sure his trunk had come. It has, hasn’t it?”
    “Oh, is that you, Jane? Yes, his trunk has come,” said the lady with a smile. Then she turned toward the shivering youth and put out both hands eagerly, taking his cold ones in hers that felt to him like warm little veined rose leaves. She drew him without his own volition across the brick terrace into the light.
    “So this is Allan Murray!” she said, and her voice was like a mother’s caress. “My dear boy! I’m so glad to have you with me! You don’t know how precious your dear mother was to me! And I shall be so glad if you will let me take her place while you are here, as much as anyone could take the place of a woman like your mother!”
    Now was the time for him to bolt, of course, if he was ever going to get away, just jerk his hands from her frail touch and bolt! But his feet didn’t seem to understand. They just stood! And his eyes lingered hungrily on her loving ones. He longed, oh, how he wished that this woman really was a friend of his mother—that he had had a mother who could have been a friend of a woman like this one, that he might now be befriended by her. And his hands warmed to the soft vital touch of those little frail rose-leaf hands. They seemed to be warming his very soul, clear to the frightened center where he knew he was a murderer and an outlaw. But he hadn’t vitality enough left to vanish. He would have been glad if some magic could have made him invisible, or if he could have suddenly died. But nothing like that happened to men who were in trouble.
    Then, his hands and his feet having failed him in this predicament, he tried his lips, and to his surprise words came, fluently from long habit, with quite a nice sound to his voice, modest and grateful and polite and apologetic.
    “So kind of you!” he murmured safely, the old vernacularreturning from habit to his lips. “But I’m not fit to be touched. It’s been awful, you know—smoke and soot and cinders and broken things. I’m torn and dirty—I’m not fit to be seen!”
    “Why, of course!” said the dear lady with understanding. “You don’t want me to look you over and see how much you resemble your mother till you’ve had a bath and a shave. I know. I’ve had a boy of my own, you know. He died in the war”—with the breath of a sigh—“but come right up to your room. Everything is all ready, and there’s plenty of hot water. The bathroom is right next to your room, and your room is at the top of the stairs on the right. There are towels and soap and everything you need. If I’d only had your trunk key, I would have presumed to take out your clothes and hang them in the closet for you. It would have been such a pleasure to get ready for a boy again. And it would have taken out the wrinkles. But I’ve my electric iron all ready, and I can press anything that needs it while you are taking your bath. Suppose I go up with you and you unlock the trunk and hand me out your suit, and I’ll just give it a mite of a pressing while you’re in the bathroom. It won’t take a