JIMMY PRESTON sat curled up on one foot by the table in Peg Morrison’s
loft. His yellow hair was damp and towsled, for he had run bare-headed
through the rain, bearing his precious book of “Vallable Information”
tucked under his blouse.
“I didn’t bring my red ink,” he explained breathlessly to Peg, “‘cause
I was ’fraid I’d spill it. I fought I could borrow some of yours.”
“You can, an’ welcome, son,” agreed Peg, “but remember that’ll give me
an option on yours. Them that borrows ought to be willin’ to lend. They
ain’t though, as a gen’ral thing. Borrowers is spenders, and lenders is
savers, as a rule.”
“I’ll lend you my whole bottle of red ink an’ I’ll lend you my pen,
too,” said Jimmy magnificently.
The little boy spread his book open on the table for Mr. Morrison’s
inspection. “You see I’ve begun it already,” he said with pride.
“Le’ me see; what you got here?” and Peg traced the first wavering line
with a horny forefinger.
“That’s how not to lose a letter,” said Jimmy proudly. “Barb’ra says
sometimes letters are ’portant, an’ you don’t want to lose ’em.”
“‘Lev letters in the posoffis. They wil be saf ther,’” read Peg
slowly. He paused and screwed his mouth in a noiseless whistle.
“Don’t you think that’s a vallable inf’mation?” demanded Jimmy
anxiously. “If I hadn’t taken that letter and put it in my pocket, I
shouldn’t have lost it. Barb’ra could have got it herself, and maybe
it was ’portant. You can’t tell ’thout you read a letter whether it’s
’portant or not; an’ you can’t read a letter when it’s lost.”
“So you lost a letter ’dressed to Barb’ry, did you? H’m! Where’d you
lose it?”
“If I knew, I’d go an’ find it,” said Jimmy soberly. “I put it in my
pocket, an’ it was blue, an’ it was f’om out west. Barb’ra doesn’t know
who it was f’om. But she’d like to know.”
“H’m!” repeated Peg. “You’d ought to carried it all the way right in
your han’, where you c’d see it. Pockets are kind o’ dangerous when it
comes to letters. I know a whole row o’ little boys ’at ain’t alive at
all, ’count o’ a letter bein’ lost. They never was born,” he added by
way of explanation.
Jimmy drew a deep sigh of sustained interest.
“You see it was this way,” continued Peg circumstantially. “The’ was a
young feller ’at I used to know, an’ he was workin’ in a lumber-camp
one winter where the’ wasn’t any pos’offis; one o’ the men used to
carry the letters in an’ out, a matter o’ fifteen miles. One time he
lost a letter this young feller wrote to his girl, an’ didn’t think to
say nothin’ ’bout it; an’ she got all worked up ’cause she didn’t hear
f’om him, an’ after a spell she up an’ married another man; an’ so the
young man I was speakin’ of never got married, an’ never had any little
boys o’ his own. He felt awful bad ’bout it fer a long time, but he
ain’t never los’ a letter ’at b’longed to anybody else.”
The pattering sound of the rain on the barn roof increased to a steady
roar as Peg related this short but instructive tale.
“I sh’d think those little boys would feel bad,” said Jimmy
sympathetically. “I’d hate not to be alive.”
“Mebbe they do; an’ ag’in, mebbe they don’t,” observed Peg cautiously.
“Anyhow, some of ’em would be growed up by this time; farmin’ it,
mebbe, or keepin’ store.” His eyes wore a far-away look.
Jimmy dipped Peg’s pen in the red ink bottle.
“How do you spell not, Peg?” he inquired.
“K-n-o-t,” replied the old man, with a sigh.
Jimmy was silent for a long minute, his pen travelling slowly along the
blue line and leaving a trail of wabbly red letters behind.
“‘Hough knot to los a letter,’” he read aloud, with honest pride in his
achievement. “What’ll I say next, Peg?”
“Keep yer mind an’ yer eyes onto it till you get it t’ the person it’s
meant for,” the old man said, with some sternness. “You’ve got to do
that with ev’rythin’ you do,” he went on. “You can’t go moseyin’ ’long
thinkin’ ’bout ev’rythin’ under the sun ’cept what you’re doin’. If
you’re ploughin’, plough, an’ put all the grit an’ gumption you’ve got
onto ploughin’. Most folks ain’t so smart ’at they c’n afford to run a
d’partment store in their minds. Hold on! Don’t try to write all that.
Jus’ say, pay attention to that letter. You know, Cap’n,” he went on
impressively, “you come of awful fine stock. The Prestons was always
smart; your great-gran’father, he was smarter ’an all possess, an’ your
gran’father, he was jes’ the same.”
“An’ my father was, too,” interrupted Jimmy, eying the old man with a
pucker between his brown eyes. “Wasn’t he smarter’n all possess, Peg?”
“‘Course he was, Cap’n,” agreed the old man hastily. “Up to the
time he was took sick, he was A number one. An’ Barb’ry—I mean Miss
Barb’ry, she’s awful smart an’ ambitious, too, fer a female. Oh, you’ll
get along in the world, Cap’n, ’course you’ll get along! But losin’
letters is like losin’ other things, such as money an’—an’ health, an’
reputation an’—farms. It all comes o’ lettin’ yer mind kind o’ wander.
You won’t do that, will you, Cap’n?”
The man’s voice trembled; he seemed anxiously intent on the little
boy’s answer.
“I won’t, if I can help it, Peg,” Jimmy answered honestly. “But,” he
added candidly, “I like to think ’bout things in school—all kind o’
things. When I look out the windows an’ see the trees wavin’ an’ hear
the birds I like t’ p’tend I’m outdoors playin’.”
“Don’t you do it, Cap’n,” Peg spoke almost solemnly. “You keep a
stiddy holt on them thoughts o’ yourn’ an’ nail ’em down to readin’,
writin’, an’ ’rithmetic. If you ketch ’em a-wanderin’ out the window,
you fetch ’em back an’ make ’em work. You c’n do it, every trip.”
“But if I don’t want to——”
“There you got it! Struck the nail square on the head, Cap’n. You’ve
got to make yourself want to. You ain’t too young to learn, neither.
Gracious! I wisht somebody’d told me what I’m tellin’ you, when I was
’bout your age. I’ve kind o’ reasoned it out, watchin’ folks an’ their
doin’s, an’ noticin’ how I try an’ squirm out o’ doin’ things. The’s
two folks in ev’rybody, Cap’n; a lazy, good-fer-nothin’ sort o’ a chap,
that won’t do nothin’ in school, nor anywheres else if he c’n help it,
an’ there’s a smart, good, up-an’-a-goin’ feller ’at’s anxious to git
along in the world. I know ’em both inside o’ me. An’ ol’ lazybones
come nigh onto ruinin’ me when I was a boy. Lord! I jes’ wouldn’ work!
Ust t’ lie half th’ day in the sun an’ think o’ nothin’, when I’d ought
t’ been hoein’ corn. Then I’d come in an’—say I had the backache,
or th’ headache or—mos’ anythin’ I could think of. Ol’ lazybones is
an awful liar, Cap’n. You don’t want t’ listen to anythin’ he says.
You want to shet him up an’ keep him shet. He’ll lead a man t’ drink
an’ to steal other folks’ time an’ money; he’s meaner’n pusley an’
slyer’n—well, he’s s’ durned sly, Cap’n, that you gotta be on his track
all the endurin’ while.”
“Do you think I’ve got two folks in me, Peg?” asked Jimmy, laying his
hand over the pit of his stomach with a worried look.
“I’m reelly ’fraid ye have, Cap’n,” said Peg firmly. “I never see
anybody ’at hadn’t. But ef you git th’ upper han’ o’ ol’ lazybones
now’t you’re small, you won’t have much trouble with him.”
“I’m not small, Peg,” Jimmy corrected him. “You said I was large
an’—an’ hefty fer my age.”
“Sure you be, Cap’n, but you ain’t reelly a man growed. That’s what I
mean, an’ I want you should grow up into an A number one man, full o’
grit an’ gumption. An’ you can’t do it unless you start right. You see,
Cap’n, I’m gittin’ ’long in life an’ I’ve figgered it out ’at ’bout six
folks out o’ every ten kind o’ see-saws back an’ forth betwixt bein’
lazy an’ lyin’ an’ no ’count, an’ bein’ industrious an’ truthful. Folks
like that gits ’long so-so; they don’t hev no partickler good luck—ol’
lazybones keeps ’em f’om that; but they don’t git nowheres neither,
’cause they don’t stick to biz. Then the’s ’bout three out o’ ev’y ten
thet gives right up to ol’ lazybones f’om the start; an’ he runs ’em
right into th’ ground ’s fas’ ’s possible. The tenth man, he stomps
on ol’ lazybones ev’ry time he opens his head t’ speak, an’ bimeby he
gits on the right track s’ stiddy an’ constant ’at nobody c’n stop ’im.
An’ he’s the one thet gits thar! I want you should be that kind o’ a
man, Cap’n. An’ that’s one reason I give you that book o’ Vallable
Info’mation. It’ll help you to kind o’ think over differ’nt things that
happens. Now I’ll bet you won’t lose another letter in a hurry.”
“No, I won’t,” Jimmy said earnestly. “An’ I’m goin’ to try an’ stomp on
ol’ lazybones.”
“That’s right, Cap’n,” cried Peg. “You jes’ stomp on him hard an’
proper. You git th’ upper han’ o’ him b’fore he grows too big and
hefty, an’ bimeby he won’t bother you.”
“Peg,” said Jimmy, after a period devoted to reflection, “the Hon’rable
Stephen Jarvis is in our house.”
“Dear me! You don’t say so!” ejaculated Peg, with a frightened start.
“He makes Barb’ra cry,” said Jimmy, scowling fiercely. “I wanted to
stay an’ keep him f’om doin’ it; but Barb’ra said for me to come out
here and see you. I’d like to stomp on him—hard!”
The subject of these dubious comments and conjectures, more ill at ease
than his worst enemy had ever hoped to see him, sat in the dull light
of the rainy afternoon, looking at Barbara Preston with new eyes: to
wit, the eyes of a man.
“I suppose,” the girl said steadily, “you have come to tell me that you
will foreclose the mortgage.” She gripped her hands close in her lap.
“No,” said Stephen Jarvis, “that was not my intention. As I have
already informed you, the mortgage will foreclose itself, when the time
comes.”
He stopped short and narrowed his lids frowningly.
“I have been thinking about you,” he said harshly, “since you left me
so abruptly yesterday. Why did you do it? And yet, I am glad, on the
whole, that you did. I want to tell you that I stood in my library door
and witnessed my housekeeper’s dismissal of you from my house. Her own
followed without delay.”
“I am sorry,” Barbara told him mechanically. She was noticing dazedly
that Jarvis was dressed as she had occasionally seen him in church, and
that his gloves and linen were quite fresh and immaculate.
“Why should you be sorry?” he demanded with a straight look at her.
“I—why, I think I should be sorry for any woman who had lost what she
wanted to keep,” Barbara answered. “If you discharged her because I——”
“You were not primarily the cause of her dismissal,” he said coolly. “I
had already told you that I was tired of seeing the woman about.”
He was silent for a long time, gazing frowningly at the floor.
Suddenly he looked up and, meeting Barbara’s astonished and somewhat
indignant eyes, held them steadily with his own.
“You are wondering why I came here to-day. You are afraid of me, and
you doubtless fancy with the rest of the world that you—dislike me
exceedingly.”
Barbara opened her lips to reply.
“Don’t take the trouble to deny it,” he went on, with a faint sneer.
“I know what most people think of me, perhaps with reason. But I
am myself, not another; and so far, fear—dislike have seemed to me
unavoidable.” Again his rigid lips relaxed into something like a smile,
and he looked questioningly at the girl.
“It ought to be easy,” she said uncertainly, “to make people like you.
You might——”
“I know what you are thinking of,” he interrupted rudely. “But it
wouldn’t do. People fear and hate a hard man; they despise a fool. I
refuse to be despised.”
He rose and walked up and down the room impatiently as if his thoughts
irked him. Finally he paused before the window where a scarlet geranium
blossomed on the sill, and turned a singularly flushed face upon the
girl. For a dazed instant she wondered with a thrill of painfully
remembered fear if he had been drinking.
“You will be startled at what I am about to say to you,” he said, in
a changed voice. “I should have laughed at the idea if anyone had
suggested it to me a week ago. But—I want you to marry me. I want you
to be my wife. No! don’t answer; don’t refuse! You haven’t thought what
it means. You cannot consider the matter so suddenly. But this much
you can understand, I will give you this place on our wedding-day—to do
with as you like, and I will attach no conditions to the gift.”
Barbara had not removed her fascinated gaze from his face. She felt
like one dreaming fantastically and struggling unavailingly to awake.
“Perhaps you do not realize what you have asked of me,” she said at
last. “But—I will not sell myself for this farm. That is what you have
asked me to do.”
Her eyes sparkled blue fire; her lips curled disdainfully.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said roughly. “I want nothing of the sort. I want
you—you! I need you. I am more sure of it now than ever.”
He took three steps toward her, his rugged face alive with
determination—the grim determination which had wrested all that he
possessed from the grip of a hostile world.
“When I want anything,” he said doggedly, “I always get it. Didn’t you
know that? I want you.”
“You’ll not get me—ever!” cried Barbara.
She knew it must be war to the bitter end between them, and she flung
the gage of battle full in his face with fine recklessness.
“You may take everything I have, if you can. But you’ll not get me!”
He stood up and buttoned his frock coat over his white waistcoat.
“I’ll not take your answer to-day,” he said, quite unmoved by her
anger. “I had no intention of doing so.”
He strode to the door without another look at her, signalled his
coachman, stepped into his closed carriage, shut the door hard behind
him and rolled away, with a smooth whir of shining wheels.
V
“I’LL give her time to think before I see her again,” Jarvis decided,
as his swift-stepping bays carried him along through the April rain. He
dropped the window of his brougham and drew in deep satisfying breaths
of the moist air. He was glad that she had not yielded supinely, as a
weaker woman might have done. There was to his mind something heroic,
splendid in her attitude as she defied him. For the first time in his
life, Stephen Jarvis felt the stir of half-awakened passion; and the
savage within his breast, never wholly eliminated or even tamed by an
imperfect civilization, exulted at the thought of the imminent conflict
of wills, the flight, the pursuit, the inevitable capture.
“I’ll give her time to think—to be afraid!” he repeated; “then——”
The blood hammered in his temples and involuntarily he clenched his
strong hands, as if already crushing that weaker woman’s will and
subduing it to his own.
But Barbara Preston was not thinking of the fact that Stephen Jarvis
had asked her to be his wife. Being a woman, and, moreover, hard driven
by cruel necessity, she might have been pardoned, if for a moment she
had allowed her thoughts to linger upon the interview which had just
ended. She might even have recalled with a certain speculative interest
the luxurious interior of the carriage into which he had stepped and
the smooth roll of the wheels which had borne him away, safe shut from
the wind and the weather. So might she be lifted and sheltered from the
bleak peltings of poverty, and life become a smooth progression instead
of a painful pilgrimage. The girl sat quite still by the window looking
out through misty panes into a mistier world, and only vaguely aware of
dripping lilac sprays, ruddy with swelling buds, and of the flash of
wet brown wings athwart the gray sky.
Stephen Jarvis, master of fate, and thrilling with the clash of his
will upon hers, could hardly have known that the ghost of another man
stood between him and the object of this new, urgent desire of his. He
would have laughed the shadowy presence to scorn had he known it.
Yet it was this mere shadow of a man which chained Barbara’s thoughts
while the April rain softened the landscape to a soft green blur. After
all it was but natural that her one pitiful little love story should
come back to her now, even to a vision of David Whitcomb’s eager face,
his dark impatient eyes, and tossed hair, and the strong clasp of his
hand upon hers in the dusk of the summer twilight.
It was Jimmy who had come between them; little motherless Jimmy, then a
baby a year old, with big appealing eyes under a fluff of soft yellow
hair, and a voice sweeter than any bird’s. All the woman’s heart in
her had gone out to the helpless little creature who nestled in her
arms at night, and whose eyes and voice followed her as she went about
her work by day. This in the days when her father, grown suddenly old
and apathetic, had begun to shut himself up in his library, for what
purpose Barbara did not guess, at first. When she did know it was too
late. The leaves of the book had been long closed and sealed, but the
heart within her shivered at the remembrance of what was written there.
“If you really loved me,” David had said hotly, “you would not let
anyone or anything come between us.”
She told him that she could not go to him over the bodies of a sick
father and a helpless child. And since he had asked this of her, she
did not, indeed, love him.
After this stormy scene—the last between them, since David Whitcomb had
gone away, no one knew whither, nor indeed cared, since he was young
and friendless and poor—Barbara had cried herself to sleep for many
successive nights, quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child.
But one does not weep overlong at night whose brain and hands and feet
are employed in the daytime. Only the beggared rich may give themselves
to the indolent luxury of grief. After many nights of weeping followed
by days of anxiety and uncounted labors, the pain of that parting
subsided to a dull aching memory, which wakened once to cry out
bitterly when she heard that he had been seen on a ship bound to the
Yukon region in the early days of the gold fever. Many perished along
the trail that year. It was rumored that David Whitcomb was among the
number. No word ever came back to contradict the rumor, which after the
lapse of months was accepted as a fact, and so—forgotten.
It was a long time—as youth measures time—since she had thought of
David Whitcomb. Now she deliberately travelled back over the years
between, and stood looking at her anguished young self, torn between
love and duty, and at her one lover, who was not noble enough—she saw
this with mournful certainty now—to help her lift and carry her heavy
burden. Nevertheless she forgave him—as she had done hundreds of times
in the past, excusing him tenderly, as a mother might have done, for
his hot young selfishness, which refused to share her heart with a
dying man and a helpless little child.
“I am glad,” she said aloud to the shadowy presence of her one lover,
“glad that I did not yield.”
But her face was grave and sorrowful as she rose to answer a gentle
knock at the kitchen door.
Peg Morrison stood there under the shelter of an ancient green
umbrella, his puckered face smiling and healthily pink against the pale
green of the outside world.
“I lef’ the Cap’n a-studyin’ over his book,” he chuckled, as he stepped
into the kitchen, carefully wiping his feet on the braided rug inside.
“He takes to vallable info’mation as the sparks fly upwards, an’ I’m
glad to see it. Thinks I, as I looked at him settin’ down improvin’
maxims in red ink, this is a good time to talk over the situation with
Miss Barb’ry.”
Barbara drew a deep breath.
“Come in,” she said briefly.
Then, as Peg seated himself in a wooden chair, ceremoniously arranging
his coat-tails on either side, she added, “There isn’t much to say.”
“Wall, I’ve been thinkin’ fer quite a spell back that mebbe you’d
like t’ lease th’ farm to me, ’stid o’ my workin’ it on shares, as
heretofore. I’m——”
“But you haven’t had any share, Peg,” Barbara said, with a shade of
impatience. “And that is why I have felt so—so unwilling to have you
stay here and work, when I couldn’t possibly pay you what I knew you
were earning.”
Peg struck one heavy palm upon his knee before he answered, his kindly
face drawn into myriad comical puckers.
“Now, look-a-here, Miss Barb’ry,” he began. “You an’ me’s argued this
’ere question over more’n once. If I don’t get my share I’d like to
know who does? I git m’ livin’, don’t I? An’ I git free house-rent,
don’t I? An’ them two items, livin’ an’ house-rent, ’s ’bout all mos’
folks git. W’y, Miss Barb’ry, I live luxurious to what lots o’ folks
do. And then ag’in you mus’ remember that I ain’t a reelly d’sirable
farm laborer. I’m gittin’ ’long in life, an’ I can’t put in the kind
and description o’ a day’s work folks’ll pay good wages fer. I’ll bet
you——”
And the old man raised his voice to the argumentative pitch commonly
employed in heated controversies around the stove in Hewett’s grocery.
“I’ll bet you a dollar an’ a half ’at I couldn’t git a place on a farm
’round here to save my neck! I’ll bet I’d git turned down quicker’n
scat ev’ry place I’d try. ‘What!’ they’d say, ’ol’ Peg Morrison wants a
place? That ol’ coot? Why, he ain’t wo’th his victuals!’ ’Tain’t reelly
fur f’om charity, Miss Barb’ry, fer you to keep me here, givin’ me
all the veg’tables an’ po’k I want, with now an’ then a fresh egg, er
a—chicken. Sakes alive! I tell ye I’m grateful of a winter night when I
creep under that nice patchwork quilt you give me ’at I’m workin’ fer a
lady—on shares.”
Barbara laughed, an irrepressible girlish laugh, even while she shook
her head.
“I couldn’t pay you for what you’ve done for Jimmy and me since—since
father died, and—before, too. And I can’t thank you, either. I couldn’t
find words to do it if I tried.”
“Thank me!” echoed the old man exuberantly. “Say, excuse me fer
appearin’ to smile, Miss Barb’ry.” His voice grew suddenly grave. “I
guess ther’ ain’t any pertickler use in quarrellin’ ’bout it, after
all. I’ll do what I can fer you an’ the boy—bein’ a poor shakes of a
laborer—jes’ ’s long ’s I live, an’ you c’n d’pend upon it. But now
what do you think ’bout leasin’ th’ farm—say, fer a thousand dollars?”
Peg’s eyes grew round, and he gasped a little at the magnitude of the
proposition.
“I’ve got a dollar or two laid by fer a rainy day, an’ I’ll put that
down in advance,” he went on, with a chuckle, “an’ the way I’ve
figgered it I’ll make big money on the deal. W’y, look-a-here,” and
he drew a soiled newspaper from his pocket, “I come ’cross this ’ere
article th’ other day. I’d like t’ read t’ you what it says on the
subjec’ o’ onions. ‘Thirty-three acres o’ land in onions netted John
Closner of Hidalgo, Texas, ’leven thousan’ dollars!’ Hear that, will
ye? He says he perduced thirty-six carloads off’n his farm—more’n a
carload t’ an acre!’ Hold on! that ain’t all—’course that’s in Texas.
But listen t’ this, Miss Barb’ry——”
“But, Peg, there isn’t any use of talking,” interrupted the girl, “the
mortgage is going to be foreclosed the first of June, unless I——”
“Foreclosed—eh? Foreclosed!” echoed the old man. “Wall, I was ’fraid of
it when I seen his buggy here yist’day an’ ag’in t’-day. Farmers ’round
here say they hate th’ sight o’ that red-wheeled buggy worse’n pison
snakes. It gene’ally means business o’ th’ kind they ain’t lookin’
fer. Say! I wisht I’d got a-holt o’ this ’ere article on onion-growin’
before. I reelly do. Jes’ listen t’ this: ‘Onions are profitably grown
in th’ north, also. Ebenezer N. Foote of Northampton, Mass., has
perduced av’rage crops ’s high es nine hunderd an’ ten bushels t’ th’
acre! He says he expects to raise that to twelve hunderd! The annual
value of his crop ranges f’om five hunderd to six hunderd dollars per
acre!’”
Peg’s voice swelled into a veritable pæan in a high key; his face
glowed with the ecstasies of his imaginings. He carefully folded the
newspaper and stuffed it into a capacious pocket.
“Now, y’ see,” he went on oratorically, “exclusive o’ the orchards,
which had ought to net us at least five hunderd dollars this year, we
could put in, say, twenty acres o’ onions, at five hunderd dollars per
acre, that would net us—l’me see, five hunderd dollars times twenty
acres ’ud make. Here, lemme figger that out.”
The old man fumbled in his vest pocket for a stubbed pencil.
“I ain’t th’ lightnin’ calculator you’d expect fer such a schemin’ ol’
cuss,” he murmured apologetically, as he wet the lead preparatory to
computation.
Barbara smiled. “It would be ten thousand dollars,” she said. “But,
Peg, don’t you see——”
“Ten thousand dollars! Whew! I guess that ’ud make a mortgage look kind
o’ sick, wouldn’t it? We’d ought to hold on a spell longer an’ give
onions a try.”
“But we can’t, Peg. It’s only six weeks before the first of June, and
I’ve only twenty dollars in the world.”
Barbara leaned back in her chair, her face relaxed and weary and
unutterably sad.
“You must look for another place right away, Peg,” she went on, “I’ll
try and find one for you. Then, if I can get a school, or—some sort of
work. I don’t care much what it is, if it will keep Jimmy and me.”
“The’s a whole lot o’ money in p’tatoes, too,” grumbled Peg, his
anxious blue eyes on her face. “I’d ought to ’ave sowed peas an’ oats
on that hill lot las’ fall an’ ploughed ’em in this spring. It says
in this ’ere article on big crops that’ll grow p’tatoes like all
possessed. I wisht I’d come acrost th’ inf’mation b’fore.”
“Mr. Jarvis says the farm is worn out,” Barbara said, a growing
despondency in her voice. “He says the orchards are worthless, too;
they are old.”
“Shucks!” exploded Peg. “‘Course Jarvis’d talk like that when he’s
gittin’ it away f’om you fer nothin’ like its value. I’ll bet he’d have
another story to tell ef anybody was to try ’n buy it of him. Values
has a way o’ risin’ over night like bread dough once Stephen Jarvis
gits a-holt o’ a piece o’ prop’ty.”
“He asked me to marry him,” said Barbara abruptly. Then bit her lip
angrily at the old man’s look of amazed incredulity. “I’m sure I don’t
know why I told you, only I—haven’t anyone to speak to, and—no one to
advise me.”
Peg’s face grew suddenly grave.
“Don’t you be afraid I’ll mention it, Miss Barb’ry,” he said gently.
“‘Course I was kind o’ s’prised—at first. But I don’t know’s I be, come
t’ think o’ it. He asked you to be Mis’ Jarvis? Wall! You goin’ to do
it, Miss Barb’ry?”
“He said he would give me the farm,” Barbara went on slowly, “to do as
I liked with. I could—give it to Jimmy.”
She looked at him with a child’s unconscious appeal.
“Do you think I ought to—to marry him, Peg?”
The old man was still eyeing her soberly, even wistfully.
“I’ve knowed you sence you was a little girl no higher’n my knee,
Miss Barb’ry,” he began. “I’ve seed you grow up. An’ I’ve seed you go
through some pretty hard experiences. Now, I ain’t the kind to talk
very much ’bout my religion, an’ the’s times when I don’t ’pear to have
a nawful lot of it; but the’s a God that hears an’—an’ takes notice.
That much I’ve found out, an’ ef I was you I’d go to headquarters an’
git th’ best advice. But I’ll say this, ef the farm is wore out,—es he
says,—it ’pears t’ me he’s askin’ a pretty high price fer th’ prop’ty.
He wants your youth, Miss Barb’ry, an’ your pretty looks, an’ your
life. An’ es fer the Cap’n—Wall, I’d ruther not d’pend too much on th’
Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis, when it comes t’ th’ Cap’n. That’s the way it
looks to me. ’Course I don’t p’tend to be a good jedge o’ what’s best
in th’ world. I don’t look like it, do I?”
He glanced down at his patched and faded clothes with a cheerfully
acquiescent smile.
“I’ve a notion,” he went on, “that the Lord’ll advise ye ’long th’ same
lines ’s I hev. But don’t take my word fer it.”
“None of my prayers have been answered,” Barbara said, her red lips
setting themselves in obstinate lines. “I’ve given up expecting
anything so foolish. I prayed to have father get well, and he—died.”
“But he got well,” put in Peg quietly. “You c’n bet he did. Mebbe the
Lord couldn’t fetch it ’round any other way. The’ was so many things
ag’in him.”
Barbara’s delicate brows went up scornfully.
“I don’t call dying getting well,” she said.
“H’m!” murmured the old man gently. “Mebbe we don’t always call things
by their right names.”
He got to his feet slowly.
“Wall, I mus’ be gittin’ out t’ the barn.”
He fixed his friendly, anxious eyes on the girl.
“I guess I’d figger a spell on that marryin’ proposition, ef I was
you,” he said softly, and shook his head.
He turned, with his hand on the latch, to cast a dubious look back at
the girl.
“It ’pears t’ me you ain’t cut out right for the second Mis’ Jarvis,”
he said. “She’d ought b’ rights t’ be a big, upstandin’ female,
with—with red hair.”
He shut the door hastily behind him.