The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz

so was his hair. He was solidly built and his shoulders were broad, and he had a large head — not too large, but the kind of head that reminded me of Jupiter, the Roman god. His clothes were handsome and he was well-groomed. In short, he didn’t look like the sort of man a girl has to run from — I mean, the sort of man from whom a girl has to run.
    “Can I be of any use to you?” he said.
    If I am to write the truth — and I vowed that I would when Miss Chandler gave me this book — I wanted to say
yes
right away. I wanted him to take care of me. Then I remembered how stupid I’d been with the yellow-haired man, and I saw I was in danger of being stupid again. So I didn’t answer. He took a clean handkerchief out of his coat and offered it to me.
    That reminded me of Miss Chandler. I started crying again, and while I cried, the man made noises. They were sympathetic noises, and they were also, somehow, foreign. His voice wasn’t foreign; he spoke like an American. But his sympathetic noises weren’t like anything I’d heard before. And something about them made me cry harder. Oh, I’m like Florence Dombey; I cry too much. After a little, I wiped my eyes and tried to pull myself together. Men don’t like it when women cry, and I wanted that man to like me.
    “Won’t you tell me —” the man began, but I interrupted him.
    “I’m lost,” I blurted out. “I came to Baltimore to find work as a hired girl, but the train was late, so I didn’t get to town until dark, and I couldn’t find a respectable boardinghouse, and I asked a man who seemed kind, but he —” Then I stopped. I couldn’t tell this stranger what that man did. “He frightened me,” I said pitifully, because that was true, though it wasn’t the whole truth.
    He nodded as if he understood. “Is he the one who hurt you?”
    I thought for a minute he was reading my mind, because that awful man
had
hurt me. Then I saw that he was staring at my face, seeing the bruises that Cressy gave me. “Oh, no!” I said quickly, and touched the swollen place. “That’s from home. That happened a week ago.”
    “Did you run away from home?”
    I wished he hadn’t asked me that. I ought to have said
no,
right away, but I didn’t, and that was as good as saying
yes.
“I had to. My father —” I started to say
burned my books,
but my throat closed. It was a moment before I could speak. “I
had
to run away.”
    He looked very upset. “What about your mother? Won’t she worry?”
    “My mother’s dead,” I said, and he looked downright stricken and made more of those sympathetic noises. I added, “But I’m not that young. I’m eighteen.” I don’t know why I said
eighteen.
I’d meant to lie about my age, of course, but I’d planned to say I was sixteen, maybe seventeen. But for some reason,
eighteen
was what came out of my mouth. “Do you know where I might find a respectable boardinghouse?”
    He shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve never needed one, not in Baltimore. Perhaps tomorrow —” He shook his head again. “That’s no use; you need a place to stay tonight.” He stood up. “I have an idea.”
    I waited.
    “I live up the street”— he pointed to a place beyond the trees —“in the corner house, with my parents and sister and my brother David, but just now David’s in New York with my father. There are servants’ rooms at the top of the house that aren’t being used. Perhaps my mother would let you stay there. She might be able to help you find a job. There’s even a possibility — but we’ll talk about that later on. Will you come with me?”
    I stared at him with my heart in my mouth.
    “My mother’s very good,” he said. “She may seem a little brusque at first, but —” He fumbled in his pockets and brought out a card. “I ought to have introduced myself. I’m Solomon Rosenbach.”
    I took the card. It was too dark to read it, but I felt vaguely reassured. It didn’t seem