I love him though he is a saloonkeeper. I could throw my arms around his neck and cry on his shoulder with love for him and for his kindness toward Jobe. Well, this mornin the world seems strange to me. Last nite arter I had gone to bed and could look up in the clear sky at the bright stars, it jist seemed to me, while I laid there in my bed beside the big road, that every star was a eye lookin down on me with pity. And, thinkin that they looked that way, I was not a bit afraid and went to sleep, and slept till daylite. Hopin God will forgive them for makin and havin laws to put sich people as me out of home, I am Your troubled and homeless BETSY GASKINS. [Illustration] CHAPTER XL. “THEM ROOMS.” THE “DIRECTOR OF CHARITIES.” THAT mornin arter I wrote you the last time—arter I had built me a fire in my stove and got my breakfast and washed up my dishes and made my bed—I sot down on a chair out there by the big road. I never felt so queer in all my life. Not a sound could be heard, except over on the hill near Jake Stiffler’s I could heer a cow a bawlin. It was awful lonesome. No one to speak to, nothin to look at, except my things piled up there beside the road. I couldent help thinkin of poor Jobe—his beggin, and bein cold, and starvin, and sleepin in box-cars, and sich. Well, arter I had sot there a while a thinkin, I felt so bad that I jist thought I would go up to the house and take a look at them rooms and the place we had so long loved as our home. I felt afraid like to go, but I thought it might cheer me up to look into them rooms that I had cleaned and papered and swept—the rooms where Jobe and me had set in and slept; the rooms that had sheltered us in sickness and in health. So I jist throwed a shawl over my head, and walked up the walk that I had walked up thousands of times. There were the currant bushes, the lilac, the dead poppy stalks. And all the weeds and posies, that used to appear to wear a smile for me, now seemed to turn from me as if to say, “We haint yours any more. You have no bizness here now.” [Illustration: “I slipped over and put my face agin the glass.”] And as I looked at them and felt that feelin, a lump would raise up in my throat, no matter how much I swallered and tried to keep it back. Well, I walked on until I got up to the kitchen winder. When I got there it jist seemed that I couldent look in, but, knowin I had come there to see them rooms, half afraid like but determined, I slipped over and put my face agin the glass.