THE OTHER VOICE

“What do you mean, hide in Kelly’s barn?” Pepsy whispered, greatly agitated.

“Can you keep still about it?” Pee-wee said. “Girls can’t keep secrets. Can you keep still till I tell you it’s all right to speak?”

“I can keep a secret and not even tell it to you,” she shot back at him in spirited defiance. “I know a secret that will—that will—help us sure to make lots and lots of money. And I wouldn’t even tell you or Aunt Jamsiah, because she tried to make me. So there, Mr. Smarty. And I don’t care whether you tell me or not if I can’t keep a secret, but I’ve got a secret all by myself and it’s that much bigger than yours,” she said, spreading out her thin, little arms to include a vast area. “And besides that, I hate you,” she added, bursting into tears and starting for the house. “And you can have that girl who was kept in after school for a partner,” he heard her sobbing as she crossed the yard.

Pepsy did not pause to speak with Uncle Eb and Aunt Jamsiah who were sitting in the kitchen, but the latter, seeing her in tears, said kindly, “No folks passed by to the carnival to-night, Pepsy?”

“Looks like rain,” Uncle Eb said consolingly; “to-morrer’ll be the big night when they have the wrestlin’ match. I reckon Jeb Collard n’ all his summer folks will go up on th’ hay-rig from West Baxter. You wait till to-morrer night, Pep. Mamsy’ll make you up a pan of fresh doughnuts fer to-morrer night, won’t you, Mamsy? Don’t you take on now, Pepsy girl; you jes’ go ter bed n’ ferget yer troubles.”

“I don’t care about people from West Baxter,” Pepsy said, stamping her foot and shaking her head violently, “and I don’t care about the old carnival or anything—so now. They’re all too stingy—to—to—buy things—they’re too stingy. I—I—I—don’t care,” she went on fairly in hysterics, “he says I can’t—I can’t—keep—keep—a secret—but I’ve got one and I won’t tell it to anybody and I thought it up all myself and it will surely make lots and lots and lots of people come and buy—and—and he’ll see if girls can do things.” She was crying violently and shaking like a leaf.

“What is the secret, Pepsy?” Aunt Jamsiah asked gently; “maybe I can help you.”

“I won’t tell—I won’t tell anybody,” Pepsy sobbed.

They were accustomed to these outbursts of her tense little nature and said no more.

Pepsy went up to her little room under the eaves, catching each breath and trembling. No wonder they had not understood her at that big brick orphan home. No wonder she had hated it. Little as she was, she was too big for it.

She was in a mood to torment herself that night and she lay awake to listen for that dread voice from across the woods. She lay on her left side so they would have good luck next day. She was greatly overwrought and when at last she did hear the sound, loud and heartless with its sudden beginning and sudden end, it startled and terrorized her as if it were indeed that gloomy, windowless equipage of the State Orphan Home, coming to take her away.

She pushed her little fingers into her ears so that she could not hear it....