"Well--can I?" she repeated, as Caroline stared. "I'm ready to pay,
of course."
"I don't know--I don't live here," said Caroline shortly. She felt
untidy and badly dressed beside this graceful thing standing in a
faint cloud of subtle perfume of her own; her sleeves were too short
and her heavy shoes knobby and worn. She wanted furiously to smell
sweet like that; and the golden bag--oh, to feel it, powerful and
careless, on her wrist!
"Can you find out?" said the girl, eyeing the room attentively; "my
car broke down--the man left it in the road and went to Ogdenville
for gasoline. I've got to rest somewhere."
"I don't know anything about it," Caroline said coldly. "I'm waiting
for someone to come, myself. There's nobody here. I don't live here
at all."
With that, and because she was embarrassed and cross and hungry, she
opened her book ostentatiously and affected to read busily. The girl
frowned angrily a moment, then gave a foreign little shrug of her
shoulder and settled herself in a low rocking chair near the bread,
her hands loose in her lap. The old clock ticked reprovingly through
the hot and conscious silence of the room, but there was no other
sound. Caroline could not have lifted her eyes to save her life, and
the older girl's lips curled scornfully: her eyelids were sullen.
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