THE COMING OF LOVE
I love the world with all its brave endeavor,
I love its winds and floods, its suns and sands,
But, oh, I love most deeply and forever
The clinging touch of timid little hands.
The Ohio woods were gorgeous with the October coloring. The oak in regal
purple stood outlined against the beech in cloth-of-gold, while
green-flecked hickory and elm, and iridescent silver and scarlet ash, and
flaming maple added to the kaleidoscope of splendor.
The old National pike road leading down to Cloverdale was still flanked by
little rail-fenced fields that were bordered by deep woodlands. The old
Aydelot farmhouse was as neat and white, with gardens and flower beds as
well kept, as if only a day had passed since the master and mistress
thereof had gone out to their last earthly home in the Cloverdale
graveyard.
Fifteen years had seen the frontier pushed westward with magic swiftness.
The Grass River Valley, once a wide reach of emptiness and solitude, where
only one homestead stood a lone bulwark against the forces of the
wilderness, now, after a decade and a half, beheld its prairie dotted with
freeholds, where the foundations of homes were laid.
Fifteen years marked little appreciable change in the heritage given up by
Asher Aydelot out of his love for a girl and his dream of a larger
opportunity in the new West. For fifteen springtimes the old-fashioned
sweet pinks had blossomed on the two mounds where his last service had
been given to his native estate. Hardly a tree had been cut in the Aydelot
woods. The marshes in the lower ground had not been drained. The only
change in the landscape was the high grade of the railroad that cut a
triangle from the northwest corner of the farm in its haste to reach
Cloverdale and be done with it. The census of 1880, however, showed an
increase in ten years of seventy-five citizens in Clover County, and the
community felt satisfied with itself.
The afternoon train on the Cloverdale branch was late getting into town,
but the station parasites were rewarded for their patience by the sight of
a stranger following the usual two or three passengers who alighted.
Strangers were not so common in Cloverdale that anyone's face would be
forgotten under ten years of time.
"That's that same feller that come here ten year or mebby twelve year ago.
I'd know him in Guinea," one of the oldest station parasites declared.
"That's him, sure as shootin'," his comrade-in-laziness agreed. "A doctor,
don't you ricolleck? Name's Corrie, no, Craney, no, that's not it
neither--A-ah!" trying hard to think a little.
"Carey. Don't you remember?" the first speaker broke in, "Doc Carey. They
say he doctored Miss Jane in Philadelphia, an' got in good with her,
more'n a dozen years ago."
"Well," drawled the second watcher of affairs, "if he thinks he can get
anything out'n o' her by hangin' round Cloverdale, he's barkin' up the
wrong saplin'. Miss Jane, she's close, an' too set in her ways now. She
must be nigh forty."
"That's right. But, I'll bet he's goin' there now. Let's see."
The two moved to the end of the station, from which strategic point both
the main street, the National pike road, of course, and the new street
running "cat-i-cornered" from the station to the creek bridge could be
commanded.
"Darned fool! is what he is! hikin' straight as a plumbline fur the crick.
If he was worth it, I'd foller him."
"Oh, the ornery pup will be back all right. Lazy fellers waitin' to marry
rich old maids ain't worth follerin'. Darn 'em! Slick skeezicks, tryin' to
git rich jes' doin' nothin'."
So the two citizens agreed while they consigned a perfect stranger to a
mild purgatory. His brisk wholesomeness offended them, and the narrowness
of their own daily lives bred prejudice as the marshes breed mosquitoes.
Dr. Carey walked away with springing step. He was glad to be at his
journey's end; glad to be off the slow little train, and glad to see again
the October woods of the Alleghany foothills. To the eastern-bred man,
nothing in the grandeur of the prairie landscape can quite meet the
craving for the autumn beauty of the eastern forests. The slanting rays of
the late afternoon sun fell athwart the radiant foliage of the woods as
Dr. Carey's way led him between the two lines of flaming glory. When he
had cleared the creek valley, his pace slackened. Something of the old
boyhood joy of living, something of the sorrowful-sweet memory, the tender
grace of a day that is dead, but will never be forgotten, came with the
pensive autumn mood of Nature to make the day sweet to the pensive mind.
Jane Aydelot sat on the veranda of the Aydelot home, looking eagerly
toward Cloverdale, when she discovered Dr. Carey coming leisurely up the
road. She was nearly forty years old, as the railroad station loafers had
declared, but there was nothing about her to indicate the "old maid, set
in her ways." She might have passed for Asher's sister, for she had a
certain erect bearing and strong resemblance of feature. All single women
were called old maids at twenty-five in those days. Else this fair-faced
woman, with clear gray eyes and pink cheeks, and scarce a hint of white in
her abundant brown hair, would not have been considered in the then
ridiculed class. There was a mixture of resoluteness and of timidity in
the expression of her face betokening a character at once determined of
will but shrinking in action. And withal, she was daintily neat and well
kept, like her neat and well-kept farm and home.
As Dr. Carey passed up the flower-bordered walk, she arose to greet him.
If there was a look of glad expectancy in her eyes, the doctor did not
notice it, for the whole setting of the scene was peacefully lovely, and
the fresh-cheeked, white-handed woman was a joy to see. Some quick
remembrance of the brown-handed claimholders' wives crossed his mind at
that instant, and like a cruel stab to his memory came unbidden the
picture of Virginia Thaine in her dainty girlishness in the old mansion
house of the years now dead. Was he to blame that the contrast between
Asher Aydelot's wife, now of Kansas, and Jane Aydelot of Ohio should throw
the favor toward the latter, that he should forget for the moment what
the women of the frontier must sacrifice in the winning of the
wilderness?
"I am glad to see you again, Doctor," Jane Aydelot said in cordial
greeting.
"This is a very great pleasure to me, I assure you, Miss Aydelot," Horace
Carey replied, grasping her hand.
Inside the house everything was as well appointed as the outside
suggested. As the doctor was making himself more presentable after his
long journey, he realized that the pretty, old-fashioned bedroom had
evidently been a boy's room once, Asher Aydelot's room. And with a woman's
loving sentiment, neither Asher's mother nor the present owner had changed
it at all. The petals of a pink rose of the wallpaper by the old-styled
dresser were written over in a boyish hand and the doctor read the names
of "Jim and Alice," and "Asher and Nell."
"Old sweethearts of 'the Kerry Dancing' days," he thought to himself.
From the open window he looked out upon the magnificence of the autumn
forests and saw the white pike road leading down to Clover Creek and the
church spires and courthouse tower above the trees.
"The heir to all this comfort and beauty gave it up because he didn't want
to be a tavern-keeper here, and because he did want a girl--Virginia!"
Horace Carey said the name softly. "I know what her jessamine-draped
window looked out upon. I hardly realized when I was here before what
Asher's early home had been. Yet those two for love of each other are
building their lives into the life of their chosen State. It is the tiller
of the soil who must make the West. But how many times in the lonely days
in that little sod cabin must they have remembered their childhood homes!
How many times when the hot fall winds swept across the dead brown prairie
have their memories turned to the beauty of the October days here in the
East! Oh, well, the heroes weren't all killed at Lexington and Bunker
Hill, nor at Bull Run and Gettysburg. Some of them got away, and with
heroic wives went out to conquer the plains from the harsh rule of Nature
there."
When the doctor went downstairs again, a little girl met him, saying,
"Miss Jane says you may sit in the parlor, or out on the meranda, till
supper is ready."
"How pleasant! Won't you come and sit with me?" Doctor Carey replied.
"I must put the--the lap-robes on the tables to everybody's plate, and the
knives and forks and poons. Nen I'll come," she answered.
Carey sat on the veranda enjoying the minutes and waiting for the little
girl.
"What is your name?" he asked when she appeared, and climbed into Miss
Jane's vacant chair.
"Leigh Shirley. What's yours?"
"Horace Carey."
The doctor could not keep from smiling as he looked at her. She was so
little and pretty, with yellow hair, big blue eyes, china-doll cheeks, and
with all the repose of manner that only childhood and innocence can
bestow.
"I think I like you, Horace," Leigh said frankly, after carefully looking
Carey over.
"Then, we'll be friends," he declared.
"Not for so mery long." Leigh could not master the V of the alphabet yet.
"'Cause I'm going away pretty soon, Miss Jane say. You know my mamma's
dead." The little face was very grave now. "And my Uncle Jim out in Kansas
wants me. I'm going to him."
Even in her innocence, Doctor Carey noted the very definite tone and clear
trend of the young mind.
"Miss Jane loves me and I love her," Leigh explained further. "Don't you
love Miss Jane, Horace?"
"Certainly," Carey said, with some hesitancy.
"I'll tell her so. She will love you, too. She is mery sweet," Leigh
assured him. "Where are you going to?"
"I'm going back to Kansas soon."
"Wim me?"
"I should like to. Let's go together."
Leigh slid quickly from the chair and ran inside, where Doctor Carey heard
her clear childish voice saying, "He is going to Kansas, too, Miss Jane.
He says he loves you. His name is Horace, and he's mery nice. He's not
mery pretty, though, but you love him, too, don't you, Miss Jane?"
Evidently the child was close to Miss Jane, for the doctor heard something
like a kiss and low words that seemed to send her away on some errand.
Presently he caught sight of a sunny head and two big blue eyes and a
little hand beckoning to him, as Leigh peeped around the corner of the
house.
"Miss Jane says I mustn't talk too much and mustn't call you Horace, but
just Doctor Carey. Won't you come with me to get flowers for supper?"
The two strolled together into the old flower garden where verbenas and
phlox and late asters and early chrysanthemums and a few monthly roses
under Miss Jane's careful covering had weathered the first frosts. Leigh
knew each plant and shrub, and gave out information freely.
"Would you rather stay with Miss Jane?"
Doctor Carey knew he should not ask the question, but it came anyhow.
"Oh, no, I want to go to my Uncle Jim." Leigh settled the matter once for
all.
* * * * *
That night Leigh fell asleep early, for Miss Jane was methodical with
children. Then she and Doctor Carey sat until late by the open wood fire
and talked of many things, but first of Leigh and her future.
"You will miss her, I'm sure," the doctor said.
"More than anyone will know," Miss Jane replied. "But I could not be happy
without fulfilling my promise. I wrote you to come soon because each day
makes the giving up a little harder for me. But I must know the truth
about this Uncle Jim. I cannot send Leigh out of my house to be neglected
and unloved. She demands love above all things."
The pink color deepened in Miss Jane's fair cheek as she recalled what
Leigh had said to Doctor Carey about loving her. The doctor remembered
also, and knew why she blushed. Yet blushes, he thought, were becoming to
her.
"I'll tell you all I know of Mr. Shirley. We have been friends for many
years," he said.
Then as truthfully as possible he told her of the life and mind of the
lonely loving plainsman. When he had finished, Miss Jane sat awhile in
silent thought.
"It is right that you should know something of conditions here, Doctor,"
she said at last. "The older Shirleys are dead. Tank's life hastened the
end for them, the Cloverdale gossips say. And as I have owned the Shirley
House for several years, I came to know them well, and I do not think the
gossips were far out of the way."
"What of Tank's life?" Doctor Carey asked. "I have some personal reasons
for asking."
Miss Jane looked up quickly. She was a pretty woman, and a keenly
intelligent one as well. To Horace Carey, she seemed most charming at that
moment.
"Let me tell you of Alice first," she said. "You know, of course, that she
loved Jim. They were just suited to each other. But her mother and Tank's
mother planned otherwise. Alice was submissive. Tank was greedy. He wanted
the old Leigh farm. And envious, for he seemed to hate Jim always. It grew
to be the passion of his life to want to take whatever Jim had. His mother
hated Jim before he was born. It was his pre-natal heritage, combined with
a selfish nature. There was misrepresentation and deception enough to make
a plot for a novel; a misunderstanding and brief estrangement, separating
Jim and Alice forever--all managed by Tank and his mother, for the farm
first, and the downfall of Jim second. They took no account of Alice, who
must be the greatest loser. And after they were married, both
mothers-in-law were disappointed, for the Leigh farm was heavily
incumbered and sold by the sheriff the same fall, and the Shirley House
fell into Uncle Francis Aydelot's hands in about the same way. Love of
property can be the root of much misery." Miss Jane paused, for the story
brought bitterness to her kindly soul.
"It is ended now," Horace Carey said gently. "It is well that it is, I am
sure."
"Yes, Alice rests now beside her two little ones who went before her. She
had no sorrow in going, except for Leigh. And"--
"And you lifted that, I know." Doctor Carey finished the sentence.
"I tried to," Miss Jane said, struggling between timidity and
truthfulness. "I made her last hours peaceful, for she knew Leigh would be
cared for and safe. I saw to that. Tank Shirley is bound to a surrender of
all legal claim to her. It was left to Jim to take her, if he chose. If
not, she belongs to me. She is a strange child, wise beyond her years,
with a sort of power already for not telling all she knows. You can rely
on her in almost anything. She will make a strong woman some day."
Doctor Carey read the loving sacrifice back of the words, and his heart
warmed toward this sweet-spirited, childless woman.
"Jim wants her, else I could not have come," he said gently, "but you can
come to Grass River to see her sometimes."
"Oh, no, it is so far," Jane Aydelot said, and Carey realized in how small
an orbit her life revolved.
"But she does good in it. What does distance count, against that?" he
thought to himself. Aloud he said:
"Tell me of Tank, Miss Aydelot."
"He has run his course here, but he is shrewd enough to escape the law.
His parents mortgaged the Shirley House to get money to keep his doings
quiet. My Uncle Francis foreclosed on them at last. But by Jim's abrupt
leaving, Cloverdale blamed him for a long time for the family misfortunes.
Tank broke every moral law; he invested his money wildly in his greed to
make more money, until finally the bank failure came. That is a long
story, and it was a dead loss. But the cashier's suicide stopped
investigation. All blame was laid on him. And he, being dead, made no
complaint and incriminated nobody."
"Where is Tank now?" Carey asked.
He did not know why the image of Thomas Smith of Wilmington, Delaware,
should come unbidden to his mind just now, nor why he should feel that the
answer to his question held only a portion of what could have been told
him then.
"Nobody knows exactly where," Jane Aydelot replied. "He left his wife
penniless. She lived here with me and died here. Tank hasn't been seen in
Cloverdale for a long time. It is strange how family ties get warped
sometimes. And oftenest over property."
Doctor Carey thought of Asher, and was silent. But Jane Aydelot divined
his thought.
"I am thinking of our own family," she said, looking into the heart of the
wood fire. "I have my cousin Asher's heritage, which by law now neither he
nor any child of his can receive from me."
"Miss Aydelot, he doesn't want it. And there is no prejudice in him
against you at all. Moreover, if his dreams come true, little Thaine
Aydelot will never need it." There was a sternness in Carey's voice that
pained his hostess.
"But, Doctor Carey!" she began hesitatingly. Then, as if to change the
trend of thought, she added simply, "I try to use it well."
Horace Carey was by nature and experience a keen reader of human
minds. As Jane Aydelot studied the burning coals in the grate, he
studied her face, and what he read there gave him both pleasure and
pain. Between him and that face came the image of Virginia Aydelot, who
should be there instead; of the brown-handed farmer's wife, who had
given up so much for the West. And yet, that face, framed in its dark
hair, lighted by luminous dark eyes, seemed to blot out the dainty
pink and white Jane Aydelot. A strength of will, a view of life at wide
angles of vision, a resourcefulness and power of sacrifice seemed to
deify the plainly clad prairie home-maker, winning, not inheriting, her
possessions. Had Jane been anywhere else save in the home that Virginia
might have had, her future might have had another story. But why forecast
the might-have-been?
"You do use your property well, I am sure," Doctor Carey said, replying to
the last words spoken between them, "and yet, you would give it up?" He
knew her answer, or he would not have asked the question.
For reply, she rose and went to the little writing desk where the Aydelot
papers were kept. Taking therefrom two documents, she placed them in
Carey's hands.
"Read these," she said, "then promise me that in the hour when Leigh needs
my help you will let me help her."
They were the will of Francis Aydelot and her own will. How much of
sacrifice lay in that act of hers, only Horace Carey could understand.
[Illustration: "Read these," she said, "then promise me that in the hour
when Leigh needs my help you will let me help her"]
"I promise gladly, Miss Aydelot. I see why you are willing to give up
little Leigh now," he said, looking up with eyes filled with sincerest
admiration. "You are a wonderful woman. You have the same Aydelot heritage
of endurance and patience and the large view of duty that characterizes
your cousin Asher. Your setting is different. I hope the time may come
soon when Ohio and Kansas will not be so far apart as they are tonight."
He rose and took her hand in his.
If Doctor Carey's magnetism made men admire him, it was no less an
attractive force with women. As he looked into Jane Aydelot's gray eyes,
he saw a new light there. And swiftly its meaning translated itself to
him. He dropped her hand and turned away, and when their eyes met again,
the light was gone.
* * * * *
It was still Indian-Summer weather on the prairie when Doctor Carey with
little Leigh Shirley reached Careyville. He had a feeling that Jim would
prefer meeting Leigh in his own home, so no word had been sent forward as
to the time of the coming of the two.
All through the journey, the doctor had wondered how Jane Aydelot could
have given Leigh up at all. She was such a happy prattler, such an honest,
straightforward little body, such an innocent child, and, withal, so
loving that Carey lost his own heart before the first half day was ended.
In her little gray wool gown and her gray cap with its scarlet quill above
her golden hair, she was as dainty and pretty as a picture of childhood
could be.
Down on the Grass River trail, the two came upon Thaine Aydelot trudging
in from some errand to a distant neighbor, and the doctor hailed him at
once.
"Come, ride with us. We'll take you home," he said, turning the wheel for
Thaine's convenience. "This is Leigh Shirley, who is coming to live with
her uncle, Jim. You'll like to go to the Cloverdale Ranch more than ever
now."
Thaine was only a little country boy, unused to conventionalities, so he
took Leigh on her face value at once. And Leigh, honest as she was
innocent, returned the compliment. At the Sunflower Ranch, Carey drew rein
to let Thaine leave them. Leigh, putting both arms about the little boy's
neck, kissed him good-by, saying: "I have known you always because you are
the Thaine"--she caught her breath, and added: "You must come to my uncle
Jim's and see me."
"I will, I will," Thaine assured her.
Doctor Carey looked back to wave good-by just in time to see Virginia
Aydelot coming toward Thaine, who stood watching the buggy. Instantly the
pretty face of Jane Aydelot came to his mind, her face as she had looked
on the night when they sat by the wood fire in the Aydelot farmhouse.
Against that picture stood the reality of Virginia with her richer
coloring.
"Nor storm nor stress can rob her of her beauty," he thought. "However
sweet and self-sacrificing Jane Aydelot may be, the Plains would have
broken her long ago."
He turned about at once and came back to where Thaine stood beside his
mother.
"This is Jim Shirley's little girl, Mrs. Aydelot," he said, gently patting
Leigh's shoulder.
"That's my wife," little Thaine said gravely. "We will go and live at the
purple notches when I come home from the war."
Virginia's heart warmed toward the motherless little one, and Leigh
understood her at once. Nor once in all the years that followed did the
two fail each other.
The Cloverdale homestead never had known such a gala fixing as Jim Shirley
had kept there for nearly a week awaiting the doctor's return. Truly, love
is genius in itself, and only genius could have put so many quaint and
attractive touches to such common surroundings as now embellished the
little four-roomed house in the bend of Grass River.
Doctor Carey tied his horses to the post beside the trail, and, lifting
Leigh from the buggy, he said:
"Uncle Jim is up there waiting for you, and oh, so glad, so glad to have
you come. Go and meet him, Leigh."
Leigh smoothed her little gray wool frock down with her dainty little
hands. Then, pushing back the gray cap with its scarlet quill from her
forehead where the golden hair fell in soft rings, she passed up the
grassy way to meet Jim Shirley. He could never have looked bigger and
handsomer than he did at that moment. In his eyes all the heart hunger of
years seemed centered as he watched the little six-year-old child coming
towards him.
Just before reaching the doorway, she paused, and with that clear
penetration only a little child possesses, she looked up into the strong
man's face.
"Uncle Jim. My Uncle Jim," she cried. "I can love you always."
Jim gathered her close in his arms, and she clung about his neck, softly
patting his brown cheek as they passed into the house. While all unseen,
the light of love went in with them, a light that should never fade from
the hearthstone, driving loneliness and sorrow from it, far away.
Leigh Shirley's coming marked an epoch in the annals of the Grass River
settlement, for her uncle often declared that he could remember only two
events in the West before that time: the coming of Mrs. Aydelot and the
grasshopper raid. With Leigh in his home, he almost forgot that he had
ever been sad-hearted. This loving little child was such a constant source
of interest and surprise. She was so innocently plain-spoken and
self-dependent sometimes, and such a strange little dreamer of dreams at
other times. She would drive a shrewd bargain for whatever she
wanted--some more of Uncle Jim's good cookies, or a ride all alone on the
biggest pony, or a two-days' visit at the Aydelot ranch, scrupulously
rendering back value received of her own wares--kisses, or washing all the
supper dishes for her tired uncle, or staying away from her play to watch
that the chickens did not scratch in the garden.
But there were times when she would go alone to the bend in the river and
people her world with folk of her own creation and live with them and for
them. Chief among them all was a certain Prince Quippi, who would come
from China some day to marry her and take her away to a house made of
purple velvet and adorned with gold knobs. She had to send a letter to
Prince Quippi every day or he would think she did not love him. Of course,
she loved Uncle Jim best of what she called folks--but Prince Quippi was
big and brown and handsome; and, strangely enough, the only kind of letter
he could read from her was in a flower.
So Leigh dropped a flower on the waters of Grass River every day to float
away to China telling her love to Prince Quippi. And oftenest it was the
tawny sunflower, because it was big and strong and could tell a big love
story. Thus she dreamed her happy dreams until one day Thaine Aydelot,
listening to her, said:
"Why my papa sent my mamma a sunflower once, and made her love him very
much. I'll be your real Prince Quippi--not a--a paper-doll, thinkish one,
and come after you."
"Clear from China?" Leigh queried.
"Yes, when I'm a big soldier like my papa, and we'll go off to the purple
notches and live."
"You don't look like my Prince Quippi," Leigh insisted.
"But I can grow to look like _any_ thing I want to--like a big elephant or
a hippopopamus or a--angel, or _any_ _thing_," Thaine assured her.
"Well, escuse me from any of the free--a angel or a elephant. I don't know
what the poppy one is, but it's too poppy," Leigh said decisively.
There were others in the Grass River settlement who would have envied the
mythical Prince Quippi also. For even at six years of age Leigh had the
same quality that marked her uncle. People must love her if they cared for
her at all; and they couldn't help caring for her. She fitted into the
life of the prairie, too, as naturally as Thaine Aydelot did, who was born
to it. The baby gold was soon lost from her hair for the brown-gold like
the shimmering sunlight on the brown prairie. The baby blue eyes deepened
to the deep violet-blue of overhead skies in June. The pretty pink and
white complexion, however, did not grow brown under the kisses of the
prairie winds. The delicate china-doll tinting went with other baby
features, but, save for the few little brown freckles in midsummer, Leigh
Shirley kept year after year the clear complexion with the peach blossom
pink on her cheeks that only rarely the young girls of the dry western
plains possessed in those days of shadeless homes.
Thaine Aydelot looked like a gypsy beside her, he was so brown, and his
big dark eyes and heavy mane of dark hair, and ruddy cheeks made the
contrast striking. From the first day of their meeting, the children were
playmates and companions as often as opportunity offered. They sat
together in the Grass River Sabbath School; they exchanged days on days of
visits, and the first sorrow of their hitherto unclouded lives came when
they found that Leigh was too far away to attend the week-day school.
Settlers were filling up the valley rapidly, but they all wanted ranches,
and ranches do not make close neighbors. Land-lust sometimes overshadows
the divine rights of children. And the lower part of the settlement was
not yet equal to the support of a school of its own.
The two families still kept the custom of spending their Sabbaths
together. And one Sabbath Thaine showed Leigh the books and slate and
sponge and pencils he was to take to school the next week. Leigh, who had
been pleased with all of them, turned to her guardian, saying gravely:
"Uncle Jim, can I go to school wif Thaine?"
"You must meet that question every day now, Jim," Asher said. "Why not
answer it and be rid of it?"
"How can I answer it?" Jim queried.
"Virgie, help us with this educational problem of the State," Asher turned
to his wife. "Women are especially resourceful in these things, Jim. I
hope Kansas will fully recognize the fact some day."
"Who is Kansas?" Virginia asked with a smile.
"Oh, all of us men who depend so much on some woman's brain every day of
our lives," Jim assured her. "Tell me, what to do for my little girl. Mrs.
Bennington and some of the other neighbors say I should send her East for
her sake--"
"And for both of your sakes, Jim, I say, no," Virginia broke in. "The way
must open for all of our children here. It always has for everything else,
you know."
"Thaine can walk the two miles. He's made of iron, anyhow. But Leigh can't
make the five miles 'up stream,'" Asher declared.
"Jim," Virginia Aydelot said gravely, "Pryor Gaines will be our teacher
for many years, we hope, but he is hardly equal to tilling his ground now.
John Jacobs holds the mortgage on his claim still that he put there after
the grasshopper loan, which he could not pay. Life is an uphill pull for
him, and he bears his burdens so cheerfully. I believe Mr. Jacobs would
take the claim and pay him the equity. We all know how unlike a Shylock
John Jacobs really is, even if he is getting rich fast. Now, Jim, why not
take Pryor into your home and let him drive up to the school with Leigh
and the other little folks down your way. We can pay him better wages and
he will have a real home, not a lonely cabin by himself, and you will be
fortunate in having such a man in your household."
"Just the thing, Virginia," Jim declared. "Why haven't we done it before?
He always says I'm his heart and he's my lungs. We might stack up to a
one-man power. Old bachelors should be segregated, anyhow, out here. The
West needs more families. And think what Pryor Gaines' cultivated mind
will mean to a little artist soul like Leigh Shirley's. Glorious!"
"Well, Virgie, if you will also segregate John Jacobs and Dr. Carey, we'll
settle the bachelors once for all. A quartette of royal good fellows, too,
State-makers who really make. They ought to be in the legislature, but
Carey and Pryor are democrats and Jim and Jacobs are republican. They
balance too well for the interests of any party. Anyhow, if Pryor agrees,
the school problem is fixed," Asher asserted.
Pryor Gaines did agree, to the welfare of many children, who remember him
still with that deep-seated affection of student for teacher unlike any
other form of human devotion. But especially did this cultured man put
into Leigh Shirley's life a refining artistic power that stood her well in
the years to come.