Molly got up very early the next morning and took George about the yard to show him the secrets. She opened the hoard where two pennies and a gold policeman’s button were buried. She hooked his little front paws over the back fence so he could look down the street at the schoolhouse. Lastly she climbed into the willow tree, carrying George under one arm. Tom came out of the house and sauntered under the tree. “Look out you don’t drop him,” Tom called, and just at that moment the puppy squirmed out of her arms and fell. He landed on the hard ground with a disgusting little thump. One leg bent out at a crazy angle, and the puppy screamed long, horrible screams, with sobs between breaths. Molly scrambled out of the tree, dull and stunned by the accident. Tom was standing over the puppy, his face white and twisted with pain, and George, the puppy, screamed on and on.
“We can’t let him,” Tom cried. “We can’t let him.” He ran to the woodpile and brought back a hatchet. Molly was too stupefied to look away, but Tom closed his eyes and struck. The screams stopped suddenly. Tom threw the hatchet from him and leaped over the back fence. Molly saw him running away as though he were being chased.
At that moment Joe and her father came out of the back door. Molly remembered how haggard and thin and grey her father’s face was when he looked at the puppy. It was something in her father’s face that started Molly to crying. “I dropped him out of the tree, and he hurt himself, and Tom hit him, and then Tom ran away.” Her voice sounded sulky. Her father hugged Molly’s head against his hip.
“Poor Tom!” he said. “Molly, you must remember never to say anything to Tom about it, and never to look at him as though you remembered.” He threw a gunny sack over the puppy. “We must have a funeral,” he said. “Did I ever tell you about the Chinese funeral I went to, about the colored paper they throw in the air, and the little fat roast pigs on the grave?” Joe edged in closer, and even Molly’s eyes took on a gleam of interest. “Well, it was this way …”
Molly looked up at John Whiteside and saw that he seemed to be studying a piece of paper on his desk. “When I was twelve years old, my father was killed in an accident,” she said.
The great visits usually lasted about two weeks. Always there came an afternoon when George Morgan walked out into the town and did not come back until late at night. The mother made the children go to bed early, but they could hear him come home, stumbling a little against the furniture, and they could hear his voice through the wall. These were the only times when his voice was sad and discouraged. Lying with held breaths, in their beds, the children knew what that meant. In the morning he would be gone, and their hearts would be gone with him.
They had endless discussions about what he was doing. Their father was a glad Argonaut, a silver knight. Virtue and Courage and Beauty—he wore a coat of them. “Sometime,” the boys said, “sometime when we’re big, we’ll go with him and see all those things.”
“I’ll go, too,” Molly insisted.
“Oh, you’re a girl. You couldn’t go, you know.”
“But he’d let me go, you know he would. Sometime he’ll take me with him. You see if he doesn’t!”
When he was gone their mother grew plaintive again, and her eyes reddened. Querulously she demanded their love, as though it were a package they could put in her hand.
One time their father went away, and he never came back. He had never sent any money, nor had he ever written to them, but this time he just disappeared for good. For two years they waited, and then their mother said he must be dead. The children shuddered at the thought, but they refused to believe it, because no one so beautiful and fine as their father could be dead. Some place in the world he was having adventures. There was some good reason why he couldn’t come back to them. Some day when the reason was gone, he would come: Some morning he would be there with finer presents and better stories than ever before. But their mother said he must have had an accident. He must be dead. Their mother was distracted. She read those advertisements which offered to help her make money at home. The children made paper flowers and shamefacedly tried to sell them. The boys tried to develop magazine routes, and the whole family nearly starved. Finally when they couldn’t stand it any longer, the boys ran away and joined the navy. After that Molly saw them as seldom as she had seen her father, and they were so changed, so hard and boisterous, that she didn’t even care, for her brothers were strangers to her.
“I went through high school, and then I went to San Jose and entered Teachers’ College. I worked for my board and room at the home of Mrs. Allen Mont. Before I finished school my mother died, so I guess I’m a kind of an orphan, you see.”
“I’m sorry,” John Whiteside murmured gently.
Molly flushed. “That wasn’t a bid for sympathy, Mr. Whiteside. You said you wanted to know about me. Everyone has to be an orphan some time.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m an orphan too, I guess.”
Molly worked for her board and room. She did the work of a full time servant, only she received no pay. Money for clothes had to be accumulated by working in a store during summer vacation. Mrs. Mont trained her girls. “I can take a green girl, not worth a cent,” she often said, “and when that girl’s worked for me six months, she can get fifty dollars a month. Lots of women know it, and they just snap up my girls. This is the first schoolgirl I’ve tried, but even she shows a lot of improvement. She reads too much though. I always say a servant should be asleep by ten o’clock, or else she can’t do her work right.”
Mrs. Mont’s method was one of constant criticism and nagging, carried on in a just, firm tone. “Now, Molly, I don’t want to find fault, but if you don’t wipe the silver drier than that, it’ll have streaks.”—“The butter knife goes this way, Molly. Then you can put the tumbler here.”
“I always give a reason for everything,” she told her friends.
In the evening, after the dishes were washed, Molly sat on her bed and studied, and when the light was off, she lay on her bed and thought of her father. It was ridiculous to do it, she knew. It was a waste of time. Her father came up to the door, wearing a cutaway coat, and striped trousers and a top hat. He carried a huge bouquet of red roses in his hand. “I couldn’t come before, Molly. Get on your coat quickly. First we’re going down to get that evening dress in the window of Prussia’s, but we’ll have to hurry. I have tickets for the train to New York tonight. Hurry up, Molly! Don’t stand there gawping.” it was silly. Her father was dead. No, she didn’t really believe he was dead. Somewhere in the world he lived beautifully, and sometime he would come back.
Molly told one of her friends at school, “I don’t really believe it, you see, but 1 don’t disbelieve it. If 1 ever knew he was dead, why it would be awful. I don’t know what I’d do then. I don’t want to think about knowing he’s dead.”
When her mother died, she felt little besides shame. Her mother had wanted so much to be loved, and she hadn’t known how to draw love. Her importunities had bothered the children and driven them away.
“Well, that’s about all,” Molly finished. “I got my diploma, and then I was sent down here.”
“It was about the easiest interview I ever had,” John Whiteside said.
“Do you think I’ll get the position, then?”
The old man gave a quick, twinkly glance at the big meerschaum hanging over the mantel.
“That’s his friend,” Molly thought. “He has secrets with that pipe.”
“Yes, I think you’ll get the job. I think you have it already. Now, Miss Morgan, where are you going to live? You must find board and room some place.”
Before she knew she was going to say it, she had blurted, “I want to live here.”
John Whiteside opened his eyes in astonishment. “But we never take boarders, Miss Morgan.”
“Oh, I’m sorry I said that. I just liked it so much here, you see.”
He called, “Willa,” and when his wife stood in the half-open door. “This young lady wants to board with us. She’s the new teacher.”