A Prologue To Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be very, very careful, Papa always tells me.”
     
    “Ho!” snorted Tom.
     
    “I’ve got ten dollars in my tin bank in the house,” offered Caroline. She drew a deep breath and added over the bellowing of the wind: “I haven’t told her yet, but I’m going to give three of them tomorrow to Beth. It’s her birthday.”
     
    “That’s nice,” said Tom, gentle again.
     
    “She gave me a birthday present last April,” said Caroline. “A little doll; she made the clothes herself. It was the first doll I ever had.”
     
    “Don’t you get Christmas presents?” asked Tom disbelievingly.
     
    Caroline shook her large head. “No. Papa doesn’t believe in them. He says it’s a waste of money and foolish. But he gave me three dollars on my birthday.”
     
    “Doesn’t he ever bring you anything when he comes home?”
     
    “No,” said Caroline, surprised. “Why should he?”
     
    “I’ll be damned,” said Tom.
     
    Caroline twisted her hands together. She had heard anger in Tom’s voice. “My papa loves me very much,” she said. “And I love him more than anything. I don’t need presents.”
     
    Beth came out on the rickety porch, her head wrapped in a shawl. “Carrie!” she shouted, taking a careful step or two toward the treacherous broken steps. “Carrie, you come in now and have your supper! And who’re you talking to?” She peered at the children in the sullen half-light.
     
    Tom waved to her. “It’s just me, Mrs. Knowles!” he shouted back. “Tom Sheldon. Just talking to Carrie here. Mind?”
     
    “Well, no,” she screamed, and smiled. “Come on, Carrie.” She returned to the house and shut the battered door. She went to the fire, still smiling. “Well, something’s happened I’m glad of. Carrie’s talking to the Sheldon boy. Real natural, like a child should.”
     
    “She can’t talk to him,” said Kate. “He’ll never stand for it. You know what he thinks of the village people. I’ll give that girl a talking to.” She twitched her shawl. “Why doesn’t the brat come in?”
     
    “I’ll be right here tomorrow,” Tom was promising Caroline. “Same time. I have to help my dad during the day.”
     
    “Come back tomorrow,” said Caroline. “Be sure and come back!”
     
    Kate never permitted anything to interfere with what she fondly called her ‘digestion’; she decided not to upbraid Caroline until after supper. But her expression was grim. As the two women and the child sat at the table in the bleak lamplight and firelight, she gave Caroline intimidating glances, of which Caroline was utterly unaware. Caroline was thinking of Tom as she ate. Her beautiful hazel eyes glowed in her plain, nearly ugly face. The thick lashes that sheltered them were like a hedge about golden pools. There was even some color on her square cheeks. She had a dreaming expression, soft and reminiscent. Beth watched her, her sentimental heart yearning and tender. Why, the poor little thing was almost pretty! And all that came from just once being natural and talking to another child!
     
    The dinner was plentiful but poor in quality, for Kate ‘watched’ the bills scrupulously. Beth did the cooking, but there was little she could accomplish in the way of a fine meal under the circumstances of a restricted budget. And what, she would ask herself despairingly, could one do when the purse permitted only tough, boiled meat and boiled turnips and mashed potatoes without butter, and coarse bread and weak tea? She was certain that he fed himself well in all those foreign places and in Boston and New York and Washington, for he had a sleek look, and his skin was well tended and polished. But his child could eat like a beggar for all he cared.
     
    Caroline ate absently and with her usual silence. She had never known excellent food in all her life. She was permitted but one cup of milk a day, and never any sweets or cakes except what Beth could bake her, the ingredients of which Beth