before. I thought it was slang.'
'And the Samaritan dumped oil on his head,' the tramp muttered reminiscently. 'Seems to me I recollect a sky pilot sayin' something about that old gent. D'ye know, I've been looking for him off'n' on all my life, and never scared up hide or hair of him. They ain't no more Samaritans.'
'Wasn't I one?' she asked quickly.
He looked at her steadily, with a great curiosity and wonder. Her ear, by a movement exposed to the sun, was transparent. It seemed he could almost see through it. He was amazed at the delicacy of her colouring, at the blue of her eyes, at the dazzle of the sun-touched golden hair. And he was astounded by her fragility. It came to him that she was easily broken. His eye went quickly from his huge, gnarled paw to her tiny hand in which it seemed to him he could almost see the blood circulate. He knew the power in his muscles, and he knew the tricks and turns by which men use their bodies to ill-treat men. In fact, he knew little else, and his mind for the time ran in its customary channel. It was his way of measuring the beautiful strangeness of her. He calculated a grip, and not a strong one, that could grind her little fingers to pulp. He thought of fist-blows he had given to men's heads, and received on his own head, and felt that the least of them could shatter hers like an eggshell. He scanned her little shoulders and slim waist, and knew in all certitude that with his two hands he could rend her to pieces.
'Wasn't I one?' she insisted again.
He came back to himself with a shock-or away from himself, as the case happened. He was loth that the conversation should cease.
'What?' he answered. 'Oh, yes; you bet you was a Samaritan, even if you didn't have no olive oil.' He remembered what his mind had been dwelling on, and asked, 'But ain't you afraid?'
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
'Of… of me?' he added lamely.
She laughed merrily.
'Mamma says never to be afraid of anything. She says that if you're good, and you think good of other people, they'll be good, too.'
'And you was thinkin' good of me when you kept the sun off,' he marvelled.
'But it's hard to think good of bees and nasty crawly things,' she confessed.
'But there's men that is nasty and crawly things,' he argued.
'Mamma says no. She says there's good in every one.'
'I bet you she locks the house up tight at night just the same,' he proclaimed triumphantly.
'But she doesn't. Mamma isn't afraid of anything. That's why she lets me play out here alone when I want. Why, we had a robber once. Mamma got right up and found him. And what do you think! He was only a poor hungry man. And she got him plenty to eat from the pantry, and afterward she got him work to do.'
Ross Shanklin was stunned. The vista shown him of human nature was unthinkable. It had been his lot to live in a world of suspicion and hatred, of evil-believing and evil-doing. It had been his experience, slouching along village streets at nightfall, to see little children, screaming with fear, run from him to their mothers. He had even seen grown women shrink aside from him as he passed along the sidewalk.
He was aroused by the girl clapping her hands as she cried out.
'I know what you are! You're an open air crank. That's why you were sleeping here in the grass.'
He felt a grim desire to laugh, but repressed it.
'And that's what tramps are-open air cranks,' she continued. 'I often wondered. Mamma believes in the open air. I sleep on the porch at night. So does she. This is our land. You must have climbed the fence. Mamma lets me when I put on my climbers-they're bloomers, you know. But you ought to be told something. A person doesn't know when they snore because they're asleep. But you do worse than that. You grit your teeth. That's bad. Whenever you are going to sleep you must think to yourself, 'I won't grit my teeth, I won't grit my teeth,' over and over, just like that, and by and by you'll get out of the habit.
'All bad things are habits. And so are all good things. And it depends on us what kind our habits are going to be. I used to pucker my eyebrows-wrinkle them all up, but mamma said I must overcome that habit. She said that when my eyebrows were wrinkled it was an advertisement that my brain was wrinkled inside, and that it wasn't good to have wrinkles in the brain. And then she smoothed my eyebrows with her hand and said I must always think
She paused, rather out of breath. Nor did he speak. Her flow of talk had been too much for him. Also, sleeping drunkenly, with open mouth, had made him very thirsty. But, rather than lose one precious moment, he endured the torment of his scorching throat and mouth. He licked his dry lips and struggled for speech.
'What is your name?' he managed at last.
'Joan.'
She looked her own question at him, and it was not necessary to voice it.
'Mine is Ross Shanklin,' he volunteered, for the first time in forgotten years giving his real name.
'I suppose you've travelled a lot.'
'I sure have, but not as much as I might have wanted to.'
'Papa always wanted to travel, but he was too busy at the office. He never could get much time. He went to Europe once with mamma. That was before I was born. It takes money to travel.'
Ross Shanklin did not know whether to agree with this statement or not.
'But it doesn't cost tramps much for expenses,' she took the thought away from him. 'Is that why you tramp?'
He nodded and licked his lips.
'Mamma says it's too bad that men must tramp to look for work. But there's lots of work now in the country. All the farmers in the valley are trying to get men. Have you been working?'
He shook his head, angry with himself that he should feel shame at the confession when his savage reasoning told him he was right in despising work. But this was followed by another thought. This beautiful little creature was some man's child. She was one of the rewards of work.
'I wish I had a little girl like you,' he blurted out, stirred by a sudden consciousness of passion for paternity. 'I'd work my hands off. I… I'd do anything.'
She considered his case with fitting gravity.
'Then you aren't married?'
'Nobody would have me.'
'Yes they would, if…'
She did not turn up her nose, but she favoured his dirt and rags with a look of disapprobation he could not mistake.
'Go on,' he half-shouted. 'Shoot it into me. If I was washed-if I wore good clothes-if I was respectable-if I had a job and worked regular-if I wasn't what I am.'
To each statement she nodded.
'Well, I ain't that kind,' he rushed on.
'I'm no good. I'm a tramp. I don't want to work, that's what. And I like dirt.'
Her face was eloquent with reproach as she said, 'Then you were only making believe when you wished you had a little girl like me?'
This left him speechless, for he knew, in all the deeps of his new-found passion, that that was just what he did want.
With ready tact, noting his discomfort, she sought to change the subject.
'What do you think of God?' she asked.
'I ain't never met him. What do you think about him?'
His reply was evidently angry, and she was frank in her disapproval.
'You are very strange,' she said. 'You get angry so easily. I never saw anybody before that got angry about God, or work, or being clean.'
'He never done anything for me,' he muttered resentfully. He cast back in quick review of the long years of toil in the convict camps and mines. 'And work never done anything for me neither.'
An embarrassing silence fell.
