"Because I've got a luncheon date and a matinee in town today, and I need these things for tonight. I'm going to a party at the Mullins' Goodby, Mom. Two dozen jars enough?"
When Sally was again bent over the dishpan she heard the little old grandmother's uncertain, quavering voice:
"It ain't fair, Debbie, the way you let Pearl run over Sally. She's a nice, polite-spoken little girl, the best worker I ever see."
"I know, Ma," Mrs. Carson answered in so kind a voice that fresh tears swam in Sally's eyes. "Pearl's been spoiled. But I'm too busy now to take it out of her. I wonder, Ma, if you couldn't rip up them other two dresses that Pearl gave Sally? The child really ain't got a thing to wear. If you'll just rip the seams, I'll stitch 'em myself at night, if I ain't too tired."
Sally whirled from the dishpan, stooped swiftly and laid her lips for an instant upon Mrs. Carson's hand. Then, flushing vividly, she ran back to the kitchen sink, seized the big flour-sack dish towel and began to polish a glass with intense energy.
Although Mrs. Carson made no comment on Sally's shy caress, the girl felt that from that moment the farmer's wife was her friend, undeclared but staunch.
Knowing that any day might prove to be her last on the farm, for Carson never let slip an opportunity to threaten her by innuendo with the disgrace of being sent back to the Home, Sally found a ray of comfort in the fact that Grandma Carson, probably because she felt sorry for Sally, constantly hectored as she was by the jealous, vicious-tongued Pearl, was slowly but surely completing the necessary alterations upon the other two dresses that Pearl had given her.
The vague-eyed, kindly little old woman finished the alterations on Saturday morning, and Sally sped to her garret room with them, there to try them on and gloat over them. Then, her eyes darting now and then to the closed door, she hastily made a bundle of the three new dresses and hid it under the cornshuck mattress of her bed. Maybe it would be stealing to take the dresses if she had to run away, but she couldn't hope to escape in the orphanage uniform--
Early Saturday afternoon Mrs. Carson announced that she had to go into the city to do some shopping. The farmer suggested that Pearl drive her in, since he himself was to be busy setting up the cider mill in a shack he had built at the foot of the lane, where it ran into the state highway.