The Prodigal Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

som’ers. Said they wuz goin’ down t’ the drugsto’ at the cohneh fer a soda. Reckum they’ll return d’reckly. But you cawn’t nevvah tell. Mistah Cahteh an’ his wife don’ gon’ ta town ta the thee -a-tre, an’ Em’ly she gene’lly does as she please when dey out. I can’t be bothahd! You jes’ try the drugsto’ ef yoh wants yoh gal in a hurry. Mebbe yoh find her! I gotta go back. The baby’s cryin’!”
    The window went down with a slam.
    A sudden sense of fury descended upon Chester Thornton. Why did all these things have to happen to him at once! Just when things were looking up and everything was hopeful! Here was life in a terrible mess! Little Jane, too! Just a baby! Wandering around the streets at night with another child. He never did like those Carters. They were common! Common! That’s what they were! Or the girl would know better than to take another child out alone at night.
    He climbed wrathfully into the car and stepped furiously on the gas, startling a furtive cat into a streak of shadow.
    Now, where should he look for Jane in case she was not at the drugstore? But perhaps Jane had already gone home. Yes, of course, that was it. Jane wouldn’t go to corner drugstores alone at night. Jane knew she was to go home. That was the explanation. She had been told to return at nine o’clock. She was not common herself, even if she did like to go sometimes with a common child. Probably it was not in the least necessary for him to hunt further; of course she had gone home, and he had missed her in the dark. Nevertheless, now that he was here he would make sure.
    He parked his car hastily in front of the brightly lighted store, and leaving the engine going he sprang out to look in the window.
    There was a crowd in the drugstore. The soda fountain was always popular of course at this hour of the evening, even in winter. The nearby college and prep school supplied a continuous flow of patrons.
    Thornton stopped at the window, lowered his head to look under a poster of a bold miss advertising a new brand of cigarettes, but the crowd inside the window was too close for him to get a good survey of the entire store. He went up the steps and flung open the door, and just as he did so the crowd parted to let out an elderly woman with a large bottle and an anxious air of haste. For an instant Thornton got a glimpse of an open space beyond the crowd, and a young delicate little face strangely familiar, whirling giddily before a circle of admiring spectators.
    Almost instantly the crowd closed up again, and a noisy cheer followed. Several rough young voices called out familiarly:
    “Go to it, kid!”
    “Give us another one of those high kicks, Jane!”
    With strange premonition Thornton pushed aside the crowd of college fellows that stood in his way and brought himself inside the circle of onlookers, unmindful of the resistance of the youths who blocked his way.
    “Say, what’s your haste, old gent?” one flung up at him as he elbowed his way to the front.
    And there was Jane , his little child Jane, with her short kilted skirt tucked up like a ballet girl, her delicate features aflame with excitement, a bold, abandoned challenge in her big blue eyes, her close-cropped dark curls quivering, her bare childish knees above their rolled down stockings flashing white against the dark background of the mahogany showcase. Jane, dancing in solo, to the clamor of a jazzy radio in some unseen depth of the store’s recesses. Jane, dancing for the amusement of a score of lustful-eyed youths who watched her all agog and cheered her on with none-too-delicate phraseology. Seemingly regardless, she danced on light as thistledown yet vulgarly suggestive in a dance that might have had its origin in the slums.
    As her father entered upon the scene Jane was in the midst of an intricate whirl of arms and legs, white knees all mixed up with rippling skirts and flying arms, white hands fluttering, one dark lock of hair longer