Read "In Pawn" by Ellis Parker Butler online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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 midday, so different was her physical and mental condition than when she had thrown herself on the bed. For some quite unaccountable reason she felt tremendously strong and buoyant. For a few moments she could not grasp why she felt so, and then she suddenly realized that her cheer of mind was due to the fact that Freeman, for the only time in years, was not a threatening menace, but absolutely under her control. Until she chose to permit him to be clad, he was her prisoner, and as her prisoner, subject to her orders.
When she had drawn on her kimona and tiptoed out of her room on her way to the bath, she glanced at Freeman's closed door and smiled. No need to worry about Freeman for an hour or two.