"Oh, what a good, good man!" she rejoiced. "An' me an' the baby'll love ye forever, me an' the baby will."
Tessibel didn't remember she'd made the same promise to another man when she'd begged him in vain to help her. She only knew that Deforrest Young was offering herself and her little child a home, and a safe refuge for Andy Bishop.
"It won't be all for you, you understand, child," said Deforrest. "Think! I'll have a home, too, and you can study and work."
"An' some day when I'm earnin' money, and Andy's free, we'll pay you all back," the girl interjected.
"Well, we won't worry about that now!... As soon as you're well enough, I'll move you all up to the house. Tomorrow I'll see that coal and things're sent down from town!"
The reply to his offer was a tighter squeeze from the squatter girl's hand, and a sob from the dwarf. Unable to restrain his joy, the wee man bounded from the floor and fled up the ladder into the garret. For a time the man and girl in the room below sat silent, and all was quiet in the shanty save the voice of Andy Bishop giving forth a thanksgiving such as he had never expressed before.
* * * * * Two weeks later a light filtered through the closed shutters of Young's residence on the hill. The old Graves house creaked in the blustery March gale. The hurtling snow-particles rattled upon the blinds and against the clapboards like small shot. Deforrest Young came out of the house and fought his way against the blizzard's buffeting down the hill to the Skinner shack.
Stumbling, he fell against the door.
"It's I, Tess," he shouted.
The girl lifted the bar and admitted him. Dressed in her outer wraps, she stood in the kitchen, anxious and expectant. This minute to Tess was the changing point of her life. Young as she was, she understood what it would mean to the three of them to leave the shanty, to take up their abode in a real home.
"Ye said we was to take the baby first," she greeted him, reaching for the shawl on a peg in the door post.
"Yes, but it's so bad I'll have to take you first, child," the lawyer replied. "Come down, Andy, and after we're gone, bar the door and stand by the boy.... I'll come back after you in a few minutes."
Then he flung an arm about Tess and drew her into the winter night. Wind-blown and snow-covered, Young almost carried the shivering girl up the steps into her new home. How luxurious the comfortable furnishings seemed compared to the poverty of the shack! Young helped her off with her coat and rubbers.