where, and I guess I kin
keep up with you now your back's kinder sprained. We'll go along
together."

James Botts gulped.

"Certainly not!" he retorted severely, when he could articulate. "It's
utterly out of the question! You're not a little child any longer, and
I'm not old enough to pose as your father. You must think what people
would say!"

"Why must I?" Her clear eyes shamed him. "What's it matter? I guess two
kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an' if I have been in a brick
house with a high fence an' a playground between where never a blade of
grass grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take
care of myself a lot better 'n you kin!"

"But you don't understand!" he groaned. "There are certain conditions
that I can't very well explain, and if I did you'd think I had gone
crazy."

"Maybe," Lou observed non-committally, but she settled herself on the
bank once more with such an air of resigned anticipation that he felt
forced to continue.

"You know an army has to obey orders, don't you?" he floundered on
desperately. "Well, I'm like a one-man army; there are a lot of rules
I've got to follow. This is Monday afternoon, and I must reach New York
by midnight on Saturday; that's ninety miles or more, and you never
could make it in the world. I've got just a dollar and a half, and I
mustn't beg, borrow, or steal food or a lift or anything, but work my
way, and never take any job that'll pay me more than twenty-five cents.

"Of course, if people invite me to get up and ride with them for a
little I can accept, or if they offer me food, but I can't ask. Even the
money I earn in quarters here and there I mustn't use for traveling, but
only to buy food or medicine or clothes with. And the worst of it is
that I cannot explain to a soul why I'm doing all this."

Lou regarded him gravely, and opened her lips to speak, but closed them
again and for an appreciable moment there was silence.

"Well, I don't see anythin' in that that says you can't have somebody
travelin' along with you," she remarked, and that odd little smile
flashed again across her face. "It don't make any difference to me what
you can or can't do. _I'm_ foot-loose!"

Not until later was the meaning of that final statement to be made
manifest to her companion; the one fact upon his mind was that nothing
he had said had moved her an iota from her original decision. They would
go along together.

Well, why not? It was ob