In Pawn

“Now, don't you go an' let on to your Aunt Sue, Lem,” Harvey told the boy that night when Lem came begging to be taken back. “You just keep your mouth shut, an' in a week or so...

That noon Henrietta hurried across the road to the Bruce mansion and found Judge Bruce on the porch, wiping his face and resting, after his walk up the hill, before going in for...

“No, not Todder,” said Henrietta. “Nor Bates either. I am Mrs. William Vane. My husband is in the West. He is a worthless, drunken wreck. You can understand why I took the name...

When Henrietta Bates told Miss Susan that Freeman Todder was her husband, she told the truth, with the sole exception that her name was not Henrietta Bates nor his Freeman Todde...

What Henrietta said to Dr. Grace, who was young and had a twinkle in his eye, does not matter, but when she returned to Miss Susan's for dinner, at noon, Lem was still seemingly...

Lem Redding had a dimple in his cheek that appeared when he smiled. For a boy with a faceful of freckles he was pretty. He had dear, bright gray eyes, and his smile, aided by th...

The next morning Miss Redding held a brief conversation at the breakfast table regarding Lem's immediate future, the important question being whether Lem should be sent to schoo...

In many respects Harvey's desire to be a saint might be considered rational and even praiseworthy. If there are no officially recognized twentieth-century saints, it is probably...

While Lorna Percy was in Susan Redding's kitchen acting as a witness to the compact that placed Lem Redding in pawn to his aunt for a period that seemed likely to be extended in...

Up one of these rather steep hill streets, the last day of June, Harvey Redding climbed, with Lem now at his side and now falling behind to investigate something that caught his...

“Why this dod-basted lunatic went an' arrested me,” sputtered Harvey. “I whanged him on the head an' you'd 'a' whanged him on the head, too, if he'd come arrestin' you when you...

As Lorna Percy, Lem, and Gay Loring sat on the porch a jaunty straw hat came into view above the terrace, and, as it reached the gate, proved to be on the head of a man as jaunt...

It may be doubted if Henrietta would ever have worked as hard to save herself as she worked that night with Miss Susan to save Lem. At the end of the long plea for the boy, the...

That Miss Susan never knew that Lem had stolen from his room that evening was due to the fact that Henrietta had carried the tray to the room. The half-open screen told her how...

Again and again Lem stole from his room at night by the window route and made his way to his father's hermitage, to beg to be taken out of pawn. These visits caused Saint Harvey...

Moses Shuder, having paid Saint Harvey of Riverbank his good money, went back to his own junkyard feeling high elation. The great ambition that had urged him ever since he had b...

When Henrietta reached her room she lighted the gas and stood for many minutes before her mirror looking at her face as it was reflected there. It was thus she took stock of her...

“What you want?” he asked. “If your aunt sent you down here to get money out of me, it ain't no sort of use. I ain't got a dollar to spare.”

Before Freeman had placed Lem on Henrietta's bed, Henrietta had her door closed and locked. She stood with her back to the door, facing Freeman when he turned. She had several t...

The term of school drew to an end and July began, hot and with no sign of a refreshing rain for weeks to come. In his junkyard Saint Harvey sat and panted and fanned himself wit...

To his very considerable surprise, Lem did not find residing with the Shuders a painful experience. Rosa, for all her strange ways of doing things and her incomprehensible objec...

When Henrietta entered Lem's room the boy lay as she had left him, and he was in a deep, healthy sleep, beads of perspiration on his forehead, for his room was under a slanting...

Henrietta's first act on awakening was to look for Lem and, as she might have expected, the boy was gone. Her next was to look at her watch. She felt she must have slept until m...

Saint Harvey of Riverbank was not having a care-free sainthood those days. Lem came every night, sitting in the same place, pleading with his father to stop being a saint, and e...

The evening proved more satisfactory than Henrietta had feared. Carter Bruce did not leave Gay to Freeman, but seemed to have taken Henrietta's warning thoroughly to heart. It i...