THE SEWING MACHINE LOVEMAKER.
"Here's somebody you ought to know, Daise," remarked Lovina Nixon,
coming in from feeding the calves: "Look down the road there."
Daisy turned from her ironing and crossed to the window.
"Yes, that's Dex," she said, coolly, as she looked out, "I can see the
sewing-machine in the back of the rig, as plain as anything. Who would
that be, with him, Mother? Oh, yes, I see--it's that Mrs. Rourke. Is she
as flirty as ever?"
"Oh, she just _acts_ flirty," Lovina answered, sticking up for her old
crony, "nothin' wrong about Jen. She likes the men, an' she's full of
the ol' Nick. But it's just fun, with her--that's all."
Presently the buggy of Dex Coleman, the agent who was responsible for
district sewing machine sales, drew up in the yard. On the seat of it
were two persons--a young man with a smooth face and red lips, and his
hat a little to one side, and a buxom woman of about forty-five, with a
color like a girl and a hand that slapped her knee as she tilted back
her head and laughed. _Her_ hat was also a little on one side--pushed
into that position by a playful attempt of Mr. Coleman to kiss her.
"Well, I'm sorry the drive is ended," the latter was saying, as, having
jumped out of the buggy, he reached up a chivalrous hand to assist down
the healthy weight of Mrs. Jenny Rourke.
"Oh, indade," observed that lady, her head on one side and her foot on
the step. "Well," she added, coquettishly, as she stepped lightly out,
executed a little jig, clicked her heels together, stood up straight,
and made a face at Mr. Coleman, "I'm to be the wan that's _not_ sorry,
then--is that it. You're a divil, Dexie!"
"Your sayin' that don't make it so-o, sweetheart," returned the sewing
machine man, pleasantly; "kee-wick!" (This last a curious squirting
sound, produced with tongue and cheek, as Mr. Coleman aimed an intimate
jab at Mrs. Jenny Rourke's ribs.)
"Lave alone what don't concern you," was the advice this feat elicited
from his driving companion, as she wrinkled an eye-corner at him over
her shoulder, and vibrated (there is no other word that exactly
describes the brisk teetering walk of Mrs. Jenny Rourke) off toward the
house; "you sassy brat!"
The sedate and somewhat sour-faced Lovina was grabbed and all but lifted
off her feet by the embrace of her friend, as the latter breezed into
the farm kitchen. Then Mrs. Rourke turned and saw Daisy.
"Well, well, we-ell, an' how's the little squiress!" she roared, as she
made for the girl; "come here, me darlin', and give me the feel of your
pretty face. M-m-m!" and Mrs. Rourke kissed Daisy with a munching motion
of her own full, handsome and still fresh lips.
"Where iver did ye pick up your knight o' the garter, in this country,
alanna?" she exclaimed, holding Daisy at arms'-length between two virile
palms; "why, in Canada they're as scarce as teeth in a hen. Sure, I hope
he's an Old Country knight an' not just a mushroom Canadian 'Sir'. I
love Canadians--especially young ones, whether they're he's or
she's--but don't show me anny Canadian that's let them tack a handle to
his name. What's like flannel pants an a negligee shirt to an
Englishman, makes a Canadian look like a tailor's dummy. Where is he?"
"He's gone over with Jack to the new farm," Lovina put in, somewhat
grumblingly, "they spend all their time over there, when Jack ought to
be attendin' to his own work, if he expects to get his seedin' done in
anyways decent time this spring."
At this, Mrs. Rourke let go of Daisy, bounced over, grabbed Lovina Nixon
around the waist, threw her into a chair, and sat down plumply on her
knee.
"Aw, Jen!" her friend protested, diffident and red, but cracking a
shadowy smile for the first time that afternoon; "my hands is all
dishwatery. Set down here yourself, n' let me work while we talk."
"You stay where you are, an' let the work go for an hour. Then I'll let
you up, an' we'll both fall to; an' when the men comes in t'l their
supper, there'll not be a pin out of place," rippled Mrs. Jenny Rourke;
then she turned to Daisy and waved the hand of dismissal.
"Run on an' see your Dexie that used to be," she said, lowering her
voice to a mischievous cooing, "sure, we'll not tell, if your husband's
the jealous-minded kind. Dex knows you're here, the divil--that's why
he's waitin' outside."
Daisy, conceding a smile and a little toss of her head, went out. As she
passed through the door, the Irishwoman murmured, half to herself, her
voice warm with approval: "Straight as a string, the dear, an' able to
take care of herself, right from the time she first knew a boy was a
boy. Sure, if I didn't know that, do ye think I'd send her out with
that--that what-iver-ye-want-to-call-him. He needs managin', the worst
way. There's not half enough discipline and reshtraint in the sewing
machine business, Lovina darlin'."
Mr. Dex Coleman left the wheel of his buggy, upon which he had been
draped gracefully, and came to meet Daisy, extending both hands.
"Well, look who's he-ere!" he fluted, melodiously, "little one, little
one! there _has_ been a pain where my heart is, you kno-ow, since some
lying son of a seacook told me you were married. What, oh, what could
you have been thinking about. Why-ee, I ain't slept a wink, not for
days--not for da-ays, Dear."
Daisy, looking at him, blushed a little. She blushed because she
remembered that, not so very long ago, when the method of his approach
was new to her, her heart _had_ fluttered a little in response to the
addresses of this late-unripened, yodling, golden-noted, social
abortion. But, now that she had become habituated to men, the blush was
accompanied by a smile--a smile that wrinkled her nose a little, as the
eau-de-cologned Coleman floated close.
"Does the heart still beat true?" enquired Mr. Dexter Coleman,
"crushing" her hands in fingers that were a workless white, except where
cigarettes had stained them yellow, "does it--little one?" Studying the
slight blush on Daisy's cheeks, Mr. Coleman missed those danger-lights,
her eyes.
For the imp of mischief had sprung up in the girl like a kindled flame,
in which danced the two-horned and tridented devil of daring.
"Shall we--s-shall we go for a little drive, Dexie?" she said, making
her voice low, and leaning her head for a second against the lapel of
the Coleman coat.
"Shall we?" Mr. Coleman straightened his willowy six feet with a
spring-like abruptness; "oh, shall we! We sure shall, Cutest. This way
in, an' that way out--huh?"
So saying, and with a not unmuscular arm, the speaker "boosted" Daisy
into the buggy, sprang in himself, and pointed down the Toddburn trail.
"More room, goin' south," he observed, pulling on a pair of smart
driving-gauntlets, and jerking the whip out of its holder; "hey--shake
yourself, old-timer," this last to the livery horse, as he cut it
stingingly around the legs with the whip. The animal started; kicked
out; then set back its ears and broke into an angry trot, its head aside
and the white of an eye showing.
"He don't love me a little bit," commented Mr. Coleman, complacently,
his whip poised for another cut.
"Let me drive," came from Daisy, with a sharpness she could not keep out
of her tone, "and give me the whip." Without waiting for compliance, she
caught the reins from her companion; then pulled the whip out of his
hand and dropped it into the holster.
Mr. Coleman, his hands thus summarily freed, leaned back in pleased
soliloquy, regarding Daisy's curves and color out of the corner of his
eye.
"Now you're cleared for lovin'," was the mental interpretation he put on
Daisy's action, "so it'll all up to you--all up to you, boy."
"This sure is the life--ain't it Sweetness," was the audible remark with
which he moved closer on the seat. Daisy knew that the arm which crept
along the back of the seat, behind her shoulders, was on its way to her
waist; but, her nerves tingling, she let it creep.
It was a fine, breezy, spring day. The road, along the uplands, was dry;
but the recently-melted, winter snow had flooded the ravines, and where
the trail descended into these, it was, more often than not, necessary
to make a detour around the edge of a slough. Where the road-allowance
was fenced on both sides, most farmer owners had obligingly opened
panels of their fences to allow a loop aside where there was an
unusually miry grade. But there were a few places where the barb-wire
rampart remained inhospitably closed, with the farmer's house
threateningly in view on an adjoining hillock, and surreptitious use of
"pliers" out of the question. Here there was nothing for it but to
drive through the mud, which sometimes, diluted to the consistency of
paste, came as high as the hubs of the wheels.
"Behave, you!" said Mr. Coleman, sternly. He was addressing his own
hand, which, during Daisy's contemplation of the landscape, had moved
down until it now lightly touched her waist.
"I can't do nothin' with it, you see," he complained, a moment later, as
the recalcitrant arm settled itself snugly about his companion; "just
look at it now, Precious!"
"I see it," Daisy responded, looking straight before her; "looks kind of
becoming, doesn't it, Dexie?"
"Mighty becomin', if you ask me," corroborated the arm's proprietor,
warmly "I think it ought to stay right there, now I notice how it
looks."
Following this remark, Mr. Coleman stole a glance at the cheek that was
turned his way. The glance intoxicated him. He tightened his grip, edged
close, and dropped suddenly from jest to earnestness.
"Say!" he breathed into her ear, "let's just keep on goin', little
girl."
"Where?"
"Right on to town. Train comes in at six pee-ex. Little supper in the
hotel here, an' then board her. What do we care?"
"Aw, but, Dexie, what will people say?"
"I don't give a whoop what they say--why should you mind? I can take a
chance, if you can, Sweetheart. Come on: be a sport!"
"Aw, Dexie!"
"That's m'little girl. I knew you was game. Give us a sweet kiss
now--come awn. Whass matter?"
"The wind's pulling my hat loose," said Daisy, "I'll take it off."
"That's th' idea," approved Mr. Coleman, reining his impatience.
They were descending a hill, at the bottom of which a slough crossed the
trail. Fences to right and left forbade a detour.
"I guess we'll have to drive right through it," said Daisy.
"How about the hat?" demanded Mr. Coleman, who was now so close that his
companion could barely move her elbow, "can't you get it off?"
"Oh," Daisy looked up innocently, "I forgot about the hat. All
right--there, it's off."
She took off the hat and laid it in her lap. They had now reached the
edge of the shallow slough in the valley-bottom, into which the livery
horse waded, gingerly and slow.
"Maybe he wants a drink," said Daisy; "whoa, pettie! Thirsty?"
The horse halted and lowered his head to the water-level.
"Poor fellow!" Daisy commented, as he drank in great famished gulps,
"don't you ever water him, Dex? Aw, quit! Aw-w--you're mean! There,
now--see what you've done," and, as Coleman, red and hot-eyed, drew back
from kissing her, Daisy pointed to her hat, afloat on the slough.
"That's nothin'," said Coleman, regarding the hat as it slowly floated
away from the side of the buggy.
"Oh, no," said Daisy, with sarcasm, "it just means I've got to go home
and get another hat, before we start on this trip you were speaking of.
I won't go into Toddburn bareheaded--not even for you."
Coleman rose from his seat. "I'll sure get it for you, right now,
Sweetness," he said, "if that's how you feel about it."
"Well, you'd better hurry, for it's sailing away," Daisy advised; "no,
you can't reach it over the wheel. You'll have to stand out on the
step."
Mr. Dexie Coleman, who believed in doing everything with grace and ease,
scorned to grip the honest buggy-top for sensible support, as he poised
himself on the iron step, like Hermes, tiptoe for flight, and extended
an arm out over the water. He calculated, and rightly, that he could
just reach the hat and keep his balance.
But he had not reckoned with a gathering force behind him; and perhaps
there was no more surprised man in Toddburn than this cavalier of the
sewing machine when, a second or two later, just as his fingers closed
upon the hat, a strong push from rearward propelled him sprawlingly into
the slough. The water was only three feet deep; but, as he fell
horizontally, he went right under.
Mr. Coleman's astonishment at the turn events had taken was so intense
that he, as one might say, reclined for a moment in the bottom of the
slough, with the water roaring in his ears and choking in his throat,
before he gathered his wits together sufficiently to grope to his feet.
By the time he had regained a wet uprightness, sputtered the muddy water
out of his mouth, and blinked his eyes till vision returned, he found
that he was alone in the slough. Daisy had driven the horse out on the
farther shore, and was just getting out of the buggy. Mr. Coleman,
watching in a fascinated way, with too much water still in his windpipe
to speak, saw his late companion loop up the horse's lines in the
backhand ring, knotting them so they would not fall and tangle the
animal; then give the beast a smart little slap on the flank that
started it off at a brisk trot down the trail.
"Whoa, there!" Mr. Coleman found breath to exclaim, in a thin aqueous
squeal, as he paddled splashingly and frantically toward land. But the
horse, headed toward its evening meal of loft-dried hay and oats in the
Toddburn livery stable, exchanged its trot for a canter, and kept on
going.
"You'll have to go some, to catch him," said Daisy, levelly and
unsmiling; "he knows when he's well off." She kept her eyes steadily on
Coleman, tightening her grip on the handle of the horsewhip which she
had retained.
"Ha-agh!"
This is the nearest possible phonetic representation of the sound which
came from the man's throat, as he jumped at her. But Daisy was alert and
strong and full of fight. She stepped back and swung the horsewhip. The
sharp impact of the lash plucked the skin from the centre of Coleman's
right cheek. Returning "backhanded," the whip raised a weal along the
left side of his face, extending from mouth to ear. Coleman stopped,
straightened, and put his hand to his cheek, down which the blood was
running.
"So you were going to hit me, were you?" flashed Daisy, breathless and
sparkling. "You're _some_ man!"
There is something salutary and restorative about the rod--that
corrective instrument recommended by Solomon the Wise. Perhaps it is
less the sting than the shame--although one must admit that both must go
together, to produce the effect.
Dexie Coleman, all the bad humor gone out of him, sat down dejectedly
on a boulder. For the moment, he forgot pose,--forgot that his face was
muddy and bleeding, his hair rumpled, his clothes soaked and
dripping--forgot himself altogether.
"I'm a mean son of a gun, ain't I?" he said.
Daisy looked at him a moment narrowly and coldly. But there was neither
flutter of eyelash nor any other indication that he was "putting it on."
The girl's face softened a little.
"What are you always trying to be somebody else for, Dexie?" she said;
"talking like a vaudeville actor, and trying to be a 'bad man' with the
girls, and smoking yourself to death with cigarettes, and trying to
'land soft jobs' like driving around the country with sewing machines.
You're just an honest farm boy--why don't you be one? Get out and do
some real work, and get tanned up a little, and skin your nice white
hands on a pitchfork-handle."
Dex Coleman got off the stone and stood up. He was really a very
well-built young man, and his wet clothes, clinging to him like tights,
showed it.
"I'm goin'," he said briefly, "no use of parley-vooin' around here."
He rammed his hands in his wet pockets and, avoiding Daisy's eye,
stalked away. He forgot to lift his hat, for which Daisy's heart warmed
to him. It was rude; but it showed he was ashamed of himself. A young
man shows shame by rudeness.
"Better come back and let me wash the blood off your face," Daisy
called.
"Oh, to blazes with it!" came back gruffly, over Coleman's shoulder;
then, after an interval of three strides' duration, "so-long--Kid."
The supper-table in the Nixon farmhouse was vacated by the time Daisy
reached home. Mrs. Rourke was in the act of putting her supper in the
oven to keep it warm; and Lovina Nixon was collecting the soiled dishes
and piling them on the side-table for washing-up. John Nixon was deep in
contemplation of the cuts in the harness and hardware section of a
department store catalogue. Ware turned from the window, out of which he
had been looking. A vague anxiety, newborn this evening, seemed to light
the eyes he rested on Daisy as she entered.
As though he were the only person in the room, Daisy, looking neither to
right nor left, came straight toward him from the door. She put her arms
up, drew his face down, and kissed him on the lips.
"I want my hubby," she whispered, "my own hubby--bestest in the world!"
Ware's arms folded about her and he held her close.
Jim Burns, who had observed this tableau through the window, as he
approached the house from outside, changed his mind about coming in.
Jamming his hat over his eyes, he picked up a feed-pail and turned back
toward the barn.
"Everything's all right now, anyway," he murmured, "whatever was the
matter before. I guess likely my talking-to done him good."