"Susan wants some chickens. I promised her I'd get them. You are not
going out?" severely.
"It's such a temptation!"
"Young men who come all the way from Oregon come to study."
He strove for answer, but the young woman's nod was positive. It sent
him to the mess hall, while she hurried along the corridor, hurried to
avoid the crowd that would soon be abroad. So she had been trained, and
such was second nature. She was not afraid of any student or of all of
them. She had had delightful friends among them. But she was not a
students' belle; her dear father's abhorrence of such had kept her
unscathed.
She lived among them, but the traditions of her household kept her
apart. She was motherless, but her mother's influence had set her feet
in the path of freedom and her father saw to it that they kept their
way. In all the gay students' life that surged about her she was somehow
untouched. She was keenly alive to its phases, to all the life as a
whole, but not to any unit forming it. She saw the belles of the season
come and go at Christmas, at Easter, or the Finals, without the least
desire to outshine them, or shine with them; yet it would have been easy
enough had she wished it. Had she social aspirations she would find many
matrons in the professors' homes to chaperon her; had she been
sentimental she could have made many a bosom friend in the young girls
of the town; had she been trained otherwise, her record from her first
long skirt might have been one of reckless flirtations--for there is no
limit to a student's daring--but as it was, she lived among them quite
simply.
She ordered her father's house; she read, few knew how deeply; she rode,
she drove, and went her own way happily.
One lesson she had at heart. She took the young men about her without an
atom of seriousness. It was this which nettled Frank Lawson.
His attentions had been taken quite seriously usually, too seriously
once, he might have remembered. It aroused his insistence; it sent him
loitering by the gate to the grounds when Frances came driving down the
ribbony road winding outwards.
"I think you might take me," he declared, as she drove slowly by.
"Jump in!" Frances pulled the horse around and left the wheels towards
him hospitably opened.
Lawson thought of the beauty he had driven the afternoon before, of the
roses on her breast for which she had thanked him so graciously, of the
shining skins of his horses and the glittering wheels of his carriage,
and he set his teeth; but he climbed up into the trap and sat down by
Frances' side.
She did not offer him the reins, and he hated being driven by a woman.
"You know most of the roads about here?"
The young man assented.
"Out towards Monticello and down beyond the University and Park Street;
but you don't know this."
Frances had turned towards town, and was driving smartly past
Chancellor's and Anderson's, bookstore and drug store and loitering
grounds of the students, though the porches were empty now, along the
long street, across the high bridge spanning the narrow valley through
which the Southern railroad swept into the town, on down a steep hill;
and then she pulled sharply to the left, down a rough road past negro
cabins, another sharp hill, across a clear mountain stream, and they
were in the country.
"You've never been this way before," repeated Frances as she began to
point out the features of the country. She spoke of house and cabin and
mill; but Lawson's eyes were turned towards the misty mountains. The
keen air blew in his face, the frosty touch sent his pulses tingling:
the smell of green grass and falling leaves and fresh earth was abroad,
and over there, to right to left, swam the mountain-tops in purple
mists. Each hill they topped showed vistas of hill and valley and
far-reaching crest.
The horse went at a good pace; his driver was the most companionable of
drivers; Lawson was absurdly happy.
"What's that little blue flower?" he asked, pointing to a starry bloom,
daisy-shaped, blossoming on a weed-like stem.
"That's another of the beauties for which we thank Jefferson, that and
the Scotch broom in the woods; you saw it?"
"But where does this come from?"
"Don't ask me! Scotland, also, perhaps; here we are!" She pulled up
sharply before a cabin by the road, and, before he could take the reins
she threw down, sprang out.
Lawson sat feeling like a chagrined schoolboy. It was one of the small
accomplishments of which he was proud, to lift a woman from carriage or
saddle. He had strong muscles well trained, and he had a fashion of
putting his hands at the woman's waist and giving her a lift, quick,
light, and sure, and setting her on her feet with a look of pleased
astonishment in her eyes; now he sat holding the reins like any good boy
and watching the flutter of a blue skirt around the clusters of zinnias
and marigolds by the cabin corner. And then he heard voices and laughter
and the squawks of terrified chickens.
Frances was coming back,--a colored woman, with a bunch of chickens in
either hand, walking by her side. He listened to the woman with intense
amusement.
"Why don't you say thanky?" she was demanding.
Frances only laughed.
"I done tole yuh how pretty yuh is; now why don't yuh say thanky?"
"She ought to, that she ought," called Lawson from the trap.
"Hi, honey!" cried the delighted darkey, "is dat him? La, chile, now he
suttenly is a nice beau!"
"Aunt Roxie," said Frances haughtily, "put the chickens in the back of
the trap. You're sure you've got them tied all right?"
"'Co'se I is!"
Lawson, delighted with Frances' discomfiture, was fussing about, helping
the colored woman.
"Jes lissen at her, jes as mighty as you please," she muttered to him,
and then quite loudly, "some folks suttenly is hard to please; yuh
praises dem, dey got nutten to say; yuh praises de beau an' dey looks
mad!"
"Never mind!" cried Frances, "never mind! I'm not going to bring you any
tobacco next time I come!"
"La! Miss Frances, what mattah long yuh now--yuh know--hyar, chile,
lemme pull yuh some dese hyar flowers; de fros' done totch dem anyhow!"
But Frances was not listening; she was off fast as her horse would
trot, the chickens squawking indignantly, and Roxie by her zinnias and
marigolds gazing in open-mouthed astonishment. Lawson was shaking with
laughter. He was even with her he felt, and perhaps a little ahead. He
was sure he was ahead when, just outside the University gate, one of the
chickens, freed after much straining, fluttered under the edge of
Frances' skirt and shrieked a loud and triumphant squawk. Frances sprang
to her feet; but for Lawson she would have been out and under the wheel.
There was no laughter about that young man for one swift instant, when
he threw his arm out, pulled her back into the seat and snatched the
falling reins. The danger past, he caught the offending fowl, fluttering
now in the dash-board, handed it gravely to Frances and then, without a
word of excuse, leaned back and laughed until the tears were in his
eyes.
As for Frances, she was white, she was cold. She had been frightened for
the first time in her life into a silly deed. She was mad through and
through, but it was useless. Under that ringing laugh all else gave
way; she must join in it.
"Never mind," she declared, when Lawson drew rein outside the quadrangle
and lifted her out impressively. "I shall have that chicken for supper."
"I'm coming to help eat him!"
"Come on!" she called gayly, as she disappeared along the walk to the
campus.