Henley did not see Dixie Hart till a week had elapsed. He had started to
drive over to Carlton one morning, when he passed her as she was mending
a rail-fence round one of her fields which extended down to the road.
She had on a sunbonnet and heavy gloves, and stood in a dense patch of
prickly blackberry briers which reached to her shoulders.
"That work's too hard for you," Henley greeted her cordially. "I've done
all sorts of jobs on a farm, from splitting rails to feeding a steam
thresher, and they are picnics beside what you are now at."
"I believe you are right," she smiled, as she pushed back her bonnet and
exposed her red face and neck. "But I had to do it; the pigs have rooted
away the rotten rails next to the ground under these briers and got in
to my turnips and potatoes. But I've nearly finished, thank goodness."
"I'm off for Carlton," he informed her. "I go every day or so now on
business. Is there anything I can do for you over there?"
"There really is, Alfred." She parted the clinging briers and came quite
close to him in one of the fence corners which was infested with the
wild growth. She had drawn off her gloves, and now thrust a pink hand
into her pocket and got out a handkerchief, in a corner of which were
tied some coins. "I want you to step into the book-store and get me a
Second Reader--the sort they use in the public schools over there. It's
for little Joe. I'm learning him to read, and he's doing it as fast as a
dog can trot."
"I wish you'd let me pay for the book," Henley ventured, as she put the
money into his hand. "You know I've got twenty-five dollars of your
cash, anyway. That old cage wasn't worth anything."
"You mean I've got twenty-five dollars of _your_ money," she retorted.
"Why, I've been ashamed to look you in the face. I didn't act right
about it, and I hardly know why I done it. As a friend to you I ought to
have told you about the chance I saw and not set in to gain myself. I
don't feel right about it. I'd rather you'd have it--I can't feel like
it's mine. You'd made money out of all the other things, and you ought
to have made a clean sweep of the whole job."
"You are forgetting two main things," he said, gravely, his eyes
averted. "You forget that you paid me all I asked for the blame thing,
and that if it hadn't been for you I'd not have been at the sale of the
circus, anyway."
"You mean--" She flushed knowingly, and avoided his earnest gaze.
"That you stopped me that night, and kept me from doing the biggest fool
thing a sensible man ever was guilty of. I've thanked you in my heart,
Dixie, thousands and thousands of times. It would have ruined me for
life, but you looked ahead and saw it and saved me."
"Oh, well, that's past and gone," Dixie said, touched by a certain new
and deep quality in his voice. "I'll keep the money if you want me to. I
really need it. Old Welborne got hopping mad at me for ousting his
tenant, and simply rowed me up Salt River. Some day I may come to you
for legal advice. I want you to look over the document he got me to
sign. I want to know more about it than I do. There are too many
'aforesaids' and 'herebys' in it to suit me. I bought that farm with my
eyes shut. I was so anxious to own land that I was willing to take the
property on any terms. Welborne is getting to be like that old man in
the fairy-book that stuck to the feller's neck and never could be shook
off till he was made drunk. Welborne never touches a drop, you know, and
so he'll stick till death claims him. I'm in an awful mess. I work like
a slave from break of day till away after dark, and never seem to move a
peg toward any sort of landing-place."
"You really ought to marry," Henley said. "That's exactly what you ought
to do. There's many a good man in the world that is actually suffering
for the need of the right sort of a helpmeet."
"You hit the nail on the head that whack," she said, quite seriously. "I
know I'm better-looking now--when I'm fixed up, at least--than I will be
ten years later; and I've got sense enough to know that old maids don't
make natural-looking brides. No, I really ought to give the subject more
thought. I ain't acting in a businesslike way about it. I ought to put
myself on the market, but I let first one thing and then another
interfere, and now it seems to be little Joe. I think I've got a sort of
mother-love for him, Alfred. He works over in his field, and me in mine,
and when it's twelve o'clock I get out my dinner-bucket and call to him,
and we both go down to the spring and have a picnic. That's where I
learn him to read. If old Pitman was to get on to it I reckon he'd raise
a row. Joe fetches his pore little scraps of streak-o'-lean,
streak-o'-fat bacon an' hoe-cake along, but I make 'im throw the stuff
away. I don't know, but I believe I'd rather see that child's big,
hungry eyes as I open that bucket than to be admired by the handsomest
young man in the county. I don't know, though--I've never tried the
young-man part."
"Yes, you ought to marry, Dixie." Henley, with the true feeling of a
gentleman that he ought not to sit while she stood, got out of his buggy
and leaned on the fence. "I'm going to confess that I've thought a lot
about that very thing since I got home, and, if I'm the judge I think I
am, I believe I've run across the very man for you."
"You don't say!" Dixie cried, eagerly. "Well, well!"
"You know I drive over to Carlton every now and then," Henley went on,
"and as Jim always has a few pounds of butter, a box or so of eggs, and
the like, to send, I take 'em to a store run by a young feller that I
always did like. Jasper Long is his name. He got his start by the
hardest licks that was ever dealt by a poor boy. He was a half-orphan,
and had to take care of his old mother till she died and left him all
alone. He drove a dray about town till he was twenty, and with money
he'd saved he set up for himself in business. He's the wonder of the
town now, for he made money hand over fist. He's hitched on a brick
warehouse to his shebang, and buys cotton when it reaches its lowest ebb
and holds it till it gets to the top--then he lets loose. Me and him are
pretty thick, and when I go over there either I have to eat with him at
the hotel or he does with me. Sometimes we toss up head-or-tails to see
who pays."
"I've never seen him," Dixie said, quite interested, "but I've heard
about him. Carrie Wade said he come out to camp-meeting one Sunday, and
was pointed out as a big catch, but she said he was sort of clumsy and
awkward in his movements."
"Carrie wouldn't think his gait was so bad if he was trotting at her
side," commented Henley. "But Long's all right; he's honest, and
straight as a shingle. I'd trust him to act square in any deal, and
that's a lot to say these times. He ain't had much to do with women. You
see, they've got a sort of stuck-up society crowd over there that don't
think he's quite the thing, and so he's out of what you might call the
_elyte_. His sort are the kind that always count in any struggle,
though. He bunks in a big, wide bed in the back end of his store, and
one night when I had to lie over there because the river was out o'
banks he made me sleep with him. That was the time I advised him to
marry. It pleased him powerful, and he up and told me that he'd been
giving the matter considerable thought and investigation. He said that
every now and then it would occur to him that precious time was passing,
but that he'd been so busy he'd not had time to go at it right. He said
that most of the women on any list of the kind he'd seen was fussy and
looked lazy and thriftless. Then he come right out and asked me if I
happened to know a suitable candidate, and--well, Dixie, I couldn't hold
in. I talked as earnest as a preacher at a ranting revival. I had his
eye and I helt it clean through. I described you to him and--"
"You did?" Dixie laid an eager hand on his arm and laughed merrily,
"What did you say? Tell me exactly. I won't let you leave till you do.
Tell me, Alfred."
"Oh, I couldn't do that, Dixie!" Henley flushed to his hat. "I'd make a
botch of it. I could talk to him, but I couldn't to you--at least--at
least not on that line."
"But you've _got_ to do it!" the girl insisted. "I want to hear it. I've
always wanted to know what a man would say about me behind my back. I
know what women will say, for they will tell you to your teeth exactly
what they will behind your back, only worse, if they can possibly do it.
Try to remember exactly what you said."
Henley's blood burned fiercely in his tanned face. "I couldn't tell you
like I did him, and I hain't going to try. I ain't made that way--some
men are, but I ain't."
"You are afraid I'll feel bad about it, I see," the girl said, with
well-assumed severity, and she glanced aside that he might not read the
look of conscious power in her eyes. "You and me have been such stanch
friends that you hate to tell me what a poor opinion you have of me and
my looks. I see. I see. Well, I hain't got no right to think anybody
would think well of me--you least of all."
"Shucks! If you'd heard me you'd never complain," Henley burst forth. "I
told him you was the prettiest thing that ever wore shoe-leather; that
you had hair of a reddish-brownish mixture that no man could begin to
describe, and eyes so big and deep and drawing-like that a feller
couldn't look in 'em without wondering what they was made of, and cheeks
and lips as red and ripe and laughing as--"
"That will do," Dixie laughed, pleasurably. "You was determined to trade
me off, and you went at it like I was a horse you was trying to get rid
of for more than he was worth. Well, what else did you say?"
"Why, I told 'im about your awful struggle against adversity; about the
hold old Welborne had on you; about your mother and aunt being helpless
on your hands, and about how you wanted to add to it all by helping
Pitman's bound boy. But when I told him the other day about the way you
bought and sold that lion's cage I thought he would bust wide open. He
throwed himself back agin the counter and yelled and clapped his hands.
Said he:
"'Alf, that's the woman for me. Every trading man, needs a partner like
her. Such women as her are the mothers of kings and presidents and great
geniuses. _My_ mother was that way; she made me what I am.' And then he
railed out against conditions that could make you undergo so much
hardship, and said he'd just love to give a girl like you a good home
that you could keep neat and clean and in apple-pie order. He said his
life was lonely, and that he wanted to see a smiling face at the window
when he got home after work. He says he's able to build as good a house
as any man in Carlton, and that he already owns a corner lot on Tilbury
Avenue, the swell street of the town. The truth is, he wants to take a
look at you powerful bad, and I promised him, if it was possible, that I
would--"
"Well, I don't know about that," Dixie objected suddenly, and her pretty
brow wrinkled. "You know what they say about a burnt child. I've already
as good as offered myself to one chap. I didn't come up to requirements,
and I don't want to do it again. What you'd say to _him_ about me and
what he'd actually _think_ are two different things. If I was to meet
him and I saw from his looks that he didn't think much of your judgment
I'd hate you both and feel like scratching your eyes out. I'd make a
sensible man a good wife, and I'd do my part; but I'll be hanged if I'll
walk up to him wearing a 'For Sale' tag. What you say is mighty
interesting, and I may let it bother me a good deal, for a woman owes it
to herself to look out for number one, but there is a line of
self-respect that a woman can't cross. I'm in an awful mess, and I'd
marry to get out of it. You may say what you please about me to him, but
that's as far as I'll go."
"You don't think you could send the poor chap some word or other?"
Henley ventured, at the end of his diplomacy, as he got into his buggy
and took up the reins.
"No, I don't," was the thoughtful answer. "He's a friend of yours, and
you recommend him high enough, but we hain't been introduced, and to
take any step beforehand on _my_ side would be unbecoming of a lady, and
that's what I am."
"Yes--of course, and you know best," said Henley, as he clucked to his
horse, "but Long will be powerfully disappointed. He's got sort of
keyed up over this thing, and it has gone and unsettled him. I reckon
he's got a pretty picture of you in his mind, and keeps it before him
all the time."
"That's it," said Dixie. "And I wouldn't like to see it turn to a chromo
on his hands. I know what I look like to myself, but I wouldn't expect
to suit every taste."