The Heart Remembers by Peggy Gaddis Read Free Book Online Page A

or a window in Harbour Pines and there’s nothing here anybody would want to steal. Let the air and sunshine in. If any self-respecting burglar
did
stumble in here he’d probably leave youa donation instead of taking anything.”
    Shelley’s cheeks were pink and her eyes flashed, but looking around the forlorn little place, seeing it as he had without any of the rosy tinge of loved memories, she agreed with his dry comment.
    He helped her into the station wagon and drove on through what was for want of a better name known as the “town” and into the pine-woods. Some little distance along the road, he turned the station wagon to the left at a trail that was scarcely wide enough for a car, so that low-growing bushes fought the wheels and limbs of large trees slapped spitefully at the side and top as they drove.
    The lane came out eventually in front of a house that stood in a small, rude clearing. It was a shabby, forlorn old house that in all its existence had never known the touch of paint. Long years of wind and weather had turned the raw pine boards from which it was built to a deep, dark gray. There was a clumsy-looking chimney at one end, and above what was undoubtedly the kitchen, a length of stovepipe fastened by wires to an upright position pretended to be a chimney from the kitchen stove.
    A rickety porch ran along the front of the house, with three broken steps leading up to it. And seated on the edge of this porch there was a gaunt, leather-faced man in ragged overalls who might have been in his thirties. Above him standing on the porch was a thin, haggard-looking woman in a soiled house dress and ragged apron, a wailing baby in her arms. Clustered about the two grownups there were half a dozen dirty-faced, ragged, big-eyed children who broke into small, animal-like wailing at the sight of the station wagon.
    The woman flung up her thin, work-worn hand to cover her trembling mouth; but the man grinned ruefully, dropped the home-made cigarette he was smoking, trod on it and said politely, “Mornin’, Jim.Kinda late, ain’t you?”
    â€œA little,” admitted Jim. “Got tied up. Ready, Bud?”
    â€œReckon I am, Jim.”
    The woman whimpered and the man turned a look on her from which she shrank as from a blow, but the whimpering stopped.
    â€œShet yo’ mouth, Annie,” said the man sternly. “You and the young-’uns git in the house.”
    But despite the words and the sternness there was an abashed sort of tenderness in the way he looked at her and then slowly from one to the other of the children, and tears slipped down the woman’s face.
    â€œSorry about this, Bud,” said Jim almost savagely, his face gray beneath its sun-bronze, his jaw set.
    â€œSho’, Jim, sho’, I know you are,” said Bud cheerfully. “Reckon it ain’t nobody’s fault but mine. Hadn’t oughter tried it. But a fellow likes to try to do a little somethin’ to keep his woman and young-’uns from goin’ hungry.”
    â€œThere was a job for you at the plant,” Jim pointed out.
    â€œSho’, sho’—but I ain’t never been one to what you might call hone after hard work,” Bud grinned, unashamed.
    He was getting into the back seat of the station wagon, and Jim turned to the white-faced woman and big-eyed children.
    â€œI’m mighty sorry about this,” he said gently.
    Tears slipped down her white face but she answered him courteously.
    â€œYessir, I know you are.”
    â€œIf I don’t take him in, the sheriff will send somebody over from the county seat, who would maybe make it tougher on Bud than I will. I’ll do my best for him, Annie.”
    â€œYessir, I know you will, and I thank you. We’re goin’ to miss him, though.”
    One of the younger children, awed and bewildered by all that was going on, suddenly wailed, and the woman turned and struck at the child, a