The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall,The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all,The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ayA-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday;O Mistletoe Bough!O Mistletoe Bough!
The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall,The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all,The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ayA-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday;O Mistletoe Bough!O Mistletoe Bough!
The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall,The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all,The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ayA-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday;O Mistletoe Bough!O Mistletoe Bough!
The mistletoe hung in the old oak hall,
The holly-branch shone on the castle wa-all,
The bar'n's ree-tainers was blith' an' ga-ay
A-keepin' their Chris'mas ho-oliday;
O Mistletoe Bough!
O Mistletoe Bough!
There is something "catchy" about the wordsand the tune of this old song of a famous tragedy, whose human interest has carried it as far around the world as "Home, Sweet Home". Ware had heard it in his nursery when it was reasonably new. He joined in it now, with a vigor that fended off the dolor of the stormy sunset and the inching sleigh on its high lonely trail. Nixon swung his whip in time; even a diffident humming came from the shawl that wrapped the head of Mrs. Lovina Nixon.
After the refrain following the last stanza was concluded, Jim Burns, on his own initiative, started his favorite, the "Blizzard Song of Meadowlea." It is a characteristic of prairie people to sing or to talk about an especially gloomy phase of a present situation. The person who has newly contracted rheumatism, for instance, is told glowingly by a sympathetic visitor that, "Hank McCaffrey, he took it in the knee—just where you got it, Joe—an' he's a-settin' on the same chair yit, an' that's ten years ago." And if Mrs. Pelkey, on the northwest quarter of Section Twenty-three, sneezes after peppering the meat in the frying-pan, Mrs. Mair, over from the northeast quarter to borrow flour for a baking of bread, remarks, "This is a bad season for to catch a cold, Bella—right in the spring o' the year. I never saw a person yet that tot'ly threw off a cold they caught in the month of Ape-rile."
It was this prairie characteristic that possessed Jim Burns, when he struck up the "Blizzard Song of Meadowlea" in the face of a gathering blizzard. This melody is a versified account of an actual happening, in which a farmhouse in the School District of Meadowlea caught fire during a blizzard and the family lost their lives in the storm.
"I say, old son," Ware leaned and tapped the singer on the shoulder at the conclusion of a line running: 'An' here an' there, in drifts of snow, a frozen corpse they found', "thatisa piquant tune, you know, and you're in splendid voice—but shall we try something we all know—something comic, for instance?"
Jim Burns paused reluctantly. "Oh, all right," he grumbled, after a moment; "how about 'The Dying Cowboy'?"
"Splendid!" assented Sir William, "is that comic?"
Jim Burns rubbed his head ponderingly.
"It ain't very comic, Bill," John Nixon explained, "but—I begin to see your point—there ain't nothin' about blizzards in it. Let her go, Jim."
"Yes," said Ware, "let her go, Burns, old chap. Majority vote for 'The Dying Cowboy'. What doyousay, Mrs. Nixon?"
"Oh, don't bother to ast the weemen folk, outin this country," Lovina Nixon's voice came, muffled and sarcastic, from the depths of her shawl, "we ain't got no say, even when it comes to invitin' pernicketty people out to a house that ain't been swept nor dusted for two weeks."
"I took and scrubbed the whole floor, Mam, two days ago," said Jim Burns, in an injured voice. "The minute I got your letter that you was comin' home, I peeled off and went to her, with snow-water an' soap." Jim Burns did not add that he had scrubbed the farmhouse because he had expected Daisy with the party.
"Snow-water, eh?" Lovina's tone was half-hopeful, "well, Jim, you got more sense than I thought you had. Did you scrub behind the stove?"
"I scrubbed everywherebutthere, Mam," said Jim Burns, a little sheepishly.
"Everywhere but where the most grease-spots is," Lovina threw up her hands and lapsed again into brooding silence, "that's a man, all over again; so it is."
The last verse of "The Dying Cowboy" was snatched out of the mouths of its singers by a great gust of wind and snow, scattering over the sleigh like a wave breaking over a boat. Ware, concentrated on keeping the sleighful "in good spirits", had for the moment almost forgotten the storm; but now, rudely reminded of it by thebitter, stinging snow-grains that assailed his face and drove deep between scarf and neck, he drew tight the collar of his top-coat and looked up and about.
The blizzard had not yet closed about them. But in the far and hither distance it had thickened, blotting out the sun, that must now be almost at the horizon. Above, one could catch faint passing glimpses of the sky, beneath which the hurricane was throwing a dim-white canopy of upblown snow. About and about, the prairie and the air were a uniform quivering white. For perhaps a quarter-mile radius, one could still see definitely the drifts and the half-buried willow and poplar scrub; but beyond this the storm had built a superstructure, that was in opacity like a wall, but bellied and blew like a curtain under the huge inconstant impulse of the gale. Only in one respect was the motion of this rampart steady and uniform. That was in respect to its gradual, sure, terrific closing-in about the sleigh and its human handful. Ware, watching it fascinated, thought of the cell in the famous tale of "The Pit and the Pendulum", with its contracting circular wall that precipitated the prisoner into a central abyss.
No abyss yawned beneath the feet of the laboring horses nor the runners of the creaking, inching sleigh. But that road they trod was like the narrow path over a morass: all about it thefooting was soft, deep, delaying. If iron-shod hoof or steel-shod runner slipped, it meant loss of time, lowering of precious bodily heat, fatigue, failing of the heart—all preparations for that slowing-down of the restless body-molecules to the final stoppage which should mark the cold triumph of the frost:
"And here and there, in drifts of snow—"
"Ugh!" said Ware, humorously.
But there was nothing comic in that nearing wall, whose base crept over the drifts like the edge of a tide at flow.
It might have been midnight, or a little before, when the Galician girl whose function it had been to keep the fire going in the Nixon farmhouse stove, saw a face move by the window outside, on the way to the door. Mary had plenty of time to see it, for the face moved very slowly beyond the frost-edged pane; and she noted that it was not the face of John Nixon, with his corduroy cap, nor the red face under a "dogskin" cap, of Jim Burns. Nor was the knock, which presently sounded faint and erratic on the door-panel—like the chance rap of a frozen branch on a window—recognizable as that of anybody she knew.
She was a little afraid, as she listened to that rap which sounded as though the visitor were half-asleep; but Mary knew enough about the northwest not to keep a man standing outside ona night like this, no matter who he might be. Accordingly, she ran and opened the door.
"G'd ev'ng," said the blue lips of Sir William Ware, as he fumbled his way across the doorjamb. Mary, glancing at his face, saw that uncanny white patches covered his cheeks and that his nose was whitened to the bridge. His feet, on the floor, dragged and scuffled like the ends of cordwood sticks.
Mary knew: she had spent five winters in the west.
"You stay there," she said, backing Sir William out of the doorway with a vigorous palm, "till I big pail ice-water bring. I fix you."
"Ah, but—stop a bit," Ware spoke thickly; "your master—and mistress—far along the trail—need help. We—Burns and I—followed the horses here. Nixon stayed—with wife—she wouldn't leave the sleigh." He stopped and leaned heavily back against the door frame. Mary saw that his eyes were closing.
"I fix you first," she said, snatching up an enormous wooden bucket, throwing her apron over her head, and rushing out to the well. About her the huge veil-ends of the storm swirled as, racing down the track of light from the open doorway, she disappeared a moment into the roaring dark; then, presently, came into view again,running, with the newly-pumped icy water splashing over the edge of the bucket.
Ware, his initiative suspended and the world appearing to race about him in a dizzy flicker of white and glare and black, leaned upon the door. He felt his legs giving way, but could not stiffen them; and presently he fell into a sitting posture on the door-sill, with the wild night on his right hand, and on his left the homely interior of the farmhouse with its coal-oil lamp flaring frantically in the draught from the open door.
In this position, and with his eyes closed, Sir William felt a hand come up to his face and rub so vigorously that the back of his head bumped the door-panel with a jolt.
"I don't know what's happening," was Sir William's vague thought, "but let it happen, whatever it is. Let anything happen—now."
The rubbing continued, with an occasional pause by the aggressor—that might have been for more or less malicious scrutiny of his or her work—and presently Sir William became aware of a slight tingling in a face that up till now had been wholly without sensation. The tingling grew to a glow; and with the glow came a bracing mental effect that brought Ware's eyes open.
"See—I fix your face," said the voice of Mary, the Galician girl, in a self-congratulatory way, "now I take me your boots off." And, withoutwaiting for the word of consent, she ripped open the laces and drew off Ware's boots and socks. After which Sir William, watching with a curious half-interest, beheld her scoop up liberal handfuls of snow and commence to rub the bared feet from toe to ankle, as she had rubbed the face.
In the midst of this operation, a peal of bells sounded; and around the corner of the house came Jim Burns, with a fresh team hitched to the "jumper". Burns, a tough westerner, had been barely affected by the storm, except for frozen cheeks and nose, which he had rubbed out down at the stable. His feet, clad in thick felt "duffels", had escaped freezing.
"Hey-o;" he said, unconcernedly; "gittin' thawed out all right? Mary, I got to go back for Jack and the Missis—the sleigh's stuck in a drift, about two mile back along the trail. We cut the ponies loose, an' they led us home, right up to the stable door. Jack, he was a-goin' to come along too, at first, and fetch the Missis on his back—him and me would have took turns carryin' her. But she wouldn't hear of it, so Jack he told us to go on ahead. Said the ponies would take us home, all right, and I could come back in the jumper when I got warmed up. But," Jim Burns could not help a bit of western swagger, "I'm all right—I don't need no warmin' up. Rustle me a couplemore blankets, Mary. I'll finish rubbin' them feet out."
"Aa, you go on, Jeem Burns," Mary, interested in this tall, pleasant-faced man the storm had brought her, pushed Burns away; "You know you where yon blankets is. You get them yourself—see!"
"A-all right," the hired man, swinging his shoulders, stepped into the farmhouse living-room, gathered up a pair of heavy gray blankets from the rail bunk in a corner, brought the coal-oil can and refilled the lantern he was to take with him, and then lighted the lantern.
"I guess I can keep the trail all right, goin' out," he said, as he stepped outside, "the wind, she'll be behind me. Comin' home, the horses'll face it all right, they'll be that keen to get back into the stable again. Well, so-long, yous; keep a good fire on, Mary."
With this, Jim Burns tossed the blankets into the jumper, hopped in after them and, standing up in the vehicle as though it was a bob-sleigh, this conscious master of the northwest blizzard took off his dogskin cap, whirled it jovially around his head, and whooped to the horses. They broke into a trot, receding down the lee of the grove where the snow came tumbling over the tree-tops in vaporous clouds, like smoke from ahuge smoke-stack; and in a trice the night had swallowed them.
"You come in now," said Mary, finally; "wait, I help you." And Sir William Ware felt an arm, strong as the coil of a pythoness, constrict his waist and lift him bodily to his now sore and burning feet. Sensitive as they were, however, Sir William, putting away gentle Mary's supporting arm, stood his full weight on those restored feet, rose on his toes, turned them from side to side, and otherwise moved them to bring back circulation and pliancy.
"The doctor, he no cut them off now, eh?" commented Mary, glancing down at the healthily-reddened members in a satisfied way. Ware turned toward her instantly; stepped over; grasped her hand; shook it warmly.
"Thanks, so much," he said, with a shining gratitude, "and I wish there was a more expressive word I might use, Mary. We are, some of us," he eyed her thoughtfully, "so used to having these things done for us as a matter of course by those who are really our fellow-beings, that we often omit the 'thank you'—taking the often vital service rendered as our due, just because the good Samaritan happens to be a maid or valet. But here in Canada we're all fellow-citizens, aren't we?"
"I get you some supper," said Mary, "and fetch you a pair of the boss's socks."
The Nixon sleigh stood in the drifts, tilted end up in the attitude of a sinking boat. There were no billows to rock it, and the place where it stuck was solid enough. There was no danger of the sleigh being covered by submersion, either sudden or gradual; but the prairie winter tempest has another way of achieving burial of derelict craft and spent crews, when the travelling foot slows to a halt and the numbed brain yields to the coaxing of sleep.
There are beautiful things done between October and April by the northwest frost and sun—pattern on pane, transformation of twig, fashion of flake, aurora, twin "dogs" of the spectral sun-bow—but nothing more marvellous and swift than the building, over fallen body or stopped vehicle, of the white and wonderful sepulchre of the snow.
Out from the back of the sleigh as it stood, there tailed an indescribable drift, geometrically proportioned, beautiful beyond words. Fifteen full feet it extended, from the high sleigh-box windward, to the low drift-surface a-lee. In shape it was like the back of a saurian—one of those ruder, hardier things generationed before the earth was tempered by the Creator to thehabitation of man. Within the sleigh-box another drift had formed, extending similarly from the wind-breaking frontboard along the floor to the back end. On the high seat above the central point of this latter drift, her feet buried in it, her upper body mummied in sacks and every loose thing the sleigh had held, froze and mumbled Lovina Nixon. Out alongside the bob-sleigh, a kinetic but uni-colored piece of the vast and volatile snow-swirl, John Nixon stamped up and down in the trodden hollow he had made on the leeward side of the drift, thrashed his long arms about his torso with a vigorous smack of leather mitt on shoulder-blade, and at intervals paused to lean over the side of the sleigh-box and shout encouragement to the immovable and helpless Lovina, cowled and cloaked in horse-blankets and gunny-sacks.
"How's them feet, Lovina-girl?" would come the question—raised to a whoop in order to out-crow the hurricane and penetrate the hempen coccoon. After due pause, the response would come, querulous, monotoned and faint as a voice heard through a wall:
"Ain't I said it often, that you'd—be the death of me—Jack Nixon. Why-for did you—let them team go? Just to save your tony friends—that's all. O-o-oh!"
And John Nixon—though, with his own feet aching and his finger-ends tingling, he would betempted to retort, "How about me?"—would respond, bracingly, "Never mind, girl—there, I think I hear Jim a-comin' now. Listen!"
But the moments passed; the half-hours grew to hours; and out of the quivering white, with its perpetual hiss and whistle, its under-roar of distant wind-shaken groves, came no companionable jangle of bells. It was not until the hot bricks under Lovina's toes had lost their heat and she had commenced to cry and to labor against the creeping ache of cold by beating her feet with a dismal weak "tap-tap" against the bottom of the sleigh-box—not until stout John Nixon, aching from shoulder to waist with flailing his arms about his body, felt a cold doubt begin to rise even in the face of his confidence in hardy Jim Burns—that the shape and the sound of deliverance bulged and tinkled out through the texture of the storm-curtain, just ahead of the sleigh.
"Now, see here, you Mary," the voice was that of Lovina Nixon as, something over three-quarters of an hour later, she sat, feet in oven and tea-cup and saucer in lap, in the centre of the reassembled family group of the Nixon farmhouse; "I don't mind you helpin' yourself to Nixon's socks, when people is in need—but why don't you give 'em something to put on over the top of them, so's they won't walk the heels through," the reference was to Ware who, after anunconscious habit, developed by the usage of almost a lifetime, was pacing thoughtfully up and down the creaky floor overhead, where the spare bed was; "I got to darn them socks, not you."
"Jim," said John Nixon, as he propped a piece of pine board on the stove-pan and commenced to whittle kindlings for the morning fire, "don't forget to remind me, tomorrow, that we got to sharpen up the corks (caulks) of all them horses' shoes. I noticed yon Prince-horse kind of gruntin' as I led him into the stable, there, to-night. You ain't been loadin' them team too heavy while I been away?"
Jim Burns paused in the winding of a heavy nickel watch and glanced at his employer.
"Aw, now, Jack," he remonstrated, "don't you know no better than for to ask me a question like that? You'd think I was some green Englishman, or somethin'."
Ware, to whom this dialogue came up freely through the cracks between the warped floor-boards, smiled to himself as he sat down on the edge of the spare bed and slipped off the enormous gray socks borrowed from the wardrobe of his host.
"We do so like to be each other's critics," he murmured, with a half-sad cadence; "but I suppose it's the same, the world over.... If we could only get away from that, we children of this planet might win back what we lost at Bab-el."
"Well, Jim," Daisy, neatly hatted and furred, came down the steps of the passenger coach to Toddburn's icy station platform, set down what Ware called her "kit-bag", reached over a matter-of-fact way and, arresting the hesitating hand of Jim Burns, first shook it, and then, with a recrudescence of her old "free-actin'" self, punched him lightly in the ribs with a gloved knuckle; "how's everything? Come in by yourself?"
"Me an' the team," responded Jim Burns, with an effort at levity, "three of us altogether. How'syourself?"
"Oh, not too bad," Daisy, answering in the old phrase, caught up her "kit-bag" and stepped briskly along beside her escort; "what did you bring, Jim—the jumper?"
"What did you think I was a-goin' to bring," retorted her former playfellow, "the high-box wagon?"
They reached the end of the station platform. Down on the snow alongside, that homely but comfortable vehicle called a "jumper", full of warm-looking blankets, topped with the gray goatskinrobe, slid to and fro as Prince the colt, secured to the hitching-ring by his halter-rope, rocked spiritedly from foot to foot and pawed the snow up in clouds.
"Whoa, you!" directed Jim Burns, as he untied the haltershank. Daisy pushed her grip under the seat, looked at the blankets, and then looked at Burns.
"What have you got all these things for?" she said.
"Oh, I thought you'd be a soft city-bug by now," said Jim Burns, as he came around with the reins in his hand, "and would want every rug I could find. Jump in, an' we'll drive around to the Toddburn House. Dinner's on."
The sleigh, at a trot, crossed toward the main street, half-way down which was the Toddburn hotel, with its stable just beyond.
"Where's that Beatty?" said Jim Burns, as the two heads rocked together to the plunging of the "jumper".
"Beatty?" Daisy had been looking half-dreamily around her at the familiar little frame houses and black-lettered store-fronts, "oh—him! You better ask somebody that knows, Jimmy."
"I'm going to break his neck," said Jim Burns.
"You'd be wasting your time, Jim," Daisy returned, half-absently, as the sleigh pulled up in front of the Toddburn House. "Don't be longputting the horses away. I'll go on into the dining-room and order your dinner too. I know what you like. Turnips, isn't it?"
"Turnips!" whooped Jim Burns; "say, if we was out where nobody was lookin', I'd wash your face in the snow for that, Miss!"
"You'd try to, you mean," Daisy flung back, as she ran virilely up the steps to the hotel veranda; "hurry in, Jim."
Daisy had left her hat and furs in the "ladies' parlor" upstairs and was just coming out of the door of that apartment, when a diffident but somewhat sweet voice said, "Hello, Daisy."
Spinning about in her vigorous way, Daisy Ware looked into the mild blue eyes of a girl who had just come out of a room across the hall. In the girl's arms was a tiny baby.
"Why, Pearlie Brodie!"
"Not Pearlie Brodie now," said the fair-haired girl who had been a waitress in the Toddburn House when Mr. Frederick Beatty used to come there for his meals; "Pearlie Halliday now. Ed's buying here for the Northern Elevator Company, and we stay at the hotel."
She looked shyly down at the baby, and then added, giving the confidence of one girl to another, "Ed says the baby here will get used just the same as one of his own, and that if he ever hears of anybody saying a word to me about it,he'll knock their heads off. We were married just a little while after you went away."
"What did Ed think about me going off with Freddy?" said Daisy, coloring up a little.
"Oh, he just said, 'Yon fellow would have to be an early riser to get ahead of Daise Nixon. She'll watch herself, an' don't you forget it.' I wish Ed thought as much of me as he does of you, Daisy."
"Well, you've got him, haven't you," said Daisy, "what more do you want, Pearlie? You know right well Ed Halliday could have had any other girl in town, if he'd wanted them. If he married you, that's a sign he likes you best."
"I thought maybe he'd just took pity on me, like," said the other girl, a little sadly, "Ed, he's so good-hearted, you see."
"Aw, go on with you," exclaimed Daisy; "no fellow's going to be 'good-hearted' enough to marry one girl, if there's another he likes better. He'd have given you a lot of talking that would have done you no good, and a lot of advice you didn't need; but he'd never have married you. Come on down to dinner. Let me carry the baby: what are you going to call him, Pearlie—or is it a him?"
"I—I'd like to call him 'Frederick'," said Pearlie Halliday, her eyes dreamily on the infant, "butof course I'll call him 'Ed'. There can't be any Freddies in our family now, can there."
"I should hope not," Daisy said, kissing the baby; "I guess Ed likes you better than you do him, after all, Pearlie. But never mind. You've got aman. That's more than you'd've had if you'd married Fred."
Jim Burns did not like it much when, returning from putting the horses away, he found a third party at the table he had expected to have with Daisy. But, upon reflecting that there could be no third party on the long ten-mile drive out to the Nixon farm, he swallowed his chagrin and approached the chair next Daisy with a sociable grin.
In the country, where faith is deep, the spirit of brotherhood strong, and respectability a thing that must be through-and-through, the dishonest man or the loose woman soon "gets to be known" and to be treated, quite regardless of fortune or social position, for what he or she is. But the person so "down" only stays down because of his (or her) own fault; for the country—unlike the city—is quick to see and ready to believe in the desire of an erring neighbor to return to clean and honest ways. When Pearlie Brodie married Ed Halliday, she shut up her critics. When popular, though somewhat shiftless, Ed Halliday married Pearlie Brodie, a prominent Toddburngrain-grower, who had never taken any notice of Ed before, got him the job in the elevator.
"You'll be in a position o' trust, Ed," this wealthy patron had remarked; but—he slapped Ed on the shoulder—"a man that's helped that poor girl out the way you've done, deserves a show, an' he's a-goin' to get it. Honesty and straight livin's goin' to be the best policy, here in Canaday, as long as I have a vote. Go to it, now, boy—an' watch them grain checks."
Jim Burns was western-bred. Dangling his watch-guard in front of the infant—who regarded the utensil without interest and its owner somewhat surlily—he said, ignoring Daisy for the moment:
"We-ell, Pearlie. How's Ed a-comin' up? He's a middlin' good judge of steers, but I never heard of him knowin' much about grain."
"You didn't, eh," returned Pearlie Halliday, who had gone to school with Jim; "I s'pose you think you've heard of everything, Jimmy Burns. You seem to know a whole lot, for a boy that quit school before he was through the Third Reader."
"I done wrong, for to set in with such sassy company," was Jim's rather feeble retort, as the meat and potatoes arrived and put an end to conversation.
The jumper, on its bouncing but exhilaratingway out to the Nixon farm, had travelled three miles of the distance before Daisy's rapid-fire of tricks and talk gave Jim Burns a chance to put the question that lay nearest his heart:
"What did you go an' skedaddle off like that for, and now come back married, Daise? You know what I said to you, that day you was fixin' up my finger after I cut it on the hay-knife. Don't you mind of that? Eh, Daise?"
"Of course I remember it," Daisy looked straight at her questioner, the corners of her eyes twinkling, "I was always throwing out hints, but you were too slow to take them, Jim. A person can't wait forever. I'd have been grayheaded if I'd had to wait till you married me."
"W-what!" Jim Burns pushed his "dogskin" cap back, so he could stare at her better, "what's that you're sayin' to me?"
"I don't chew my cabbage twice," Daisy retorted, dimpling with her effort to keep a straight face.
The situation was beyond Jim Burns' power of tongue. He stared at her dumbly, until his eyes commenced to water; then he threw out an arm and made the whip sing savagely but harmlessly over the backs of the team.
"Get-epp, yous sons-of-mooses, getepp!" he half-yodled, "or I'll skin you alive!"
The horses obligingly, but without any manifestation of alarm, quickened their stride for perhaps ten paces. Then they looked at each other—seemed mutually to smile—and dropped easily back to their normal trotting-gait. In the interval, Daisy had slipped a piece of ice off the dash-board of the "jumper" down the back of Jim Burns' neck.
It was a different day from that upon which John Nixon, his wife, and Ware had driven out of Toddburn. Overhead, there was neither wind nor cloud. The wonderful sky stretched blue and bright from the black and stark groves on the east to the long expanse of snow-waves that planed away treeless to westward, meeting in a rippling line the point where earth and firmament parted on their clean, splendid and vast ways.
Daisy presently ceased from play and, under the sway of a wave of recollection, leaned back and looked about her. The sundance of her spirits, that in the old days had made summer of every season, had not been able to thaw the frost of surliness about the Nixon home. Not then; but now, it seemed, things were different. Ever since that understanding which had been arrived at in the Ware library, between Sir William and John Nixon, the farmer seemed to have opened out, changed—ratchetted back, as it were, to play over again his tune of life with a merrier lilt. Theyoung wife had often sensed vaguely the power which proceeded from this friendly philosophy which was at the root of, and gave point and purpose to, all her husband's thoughts, words and actions; but the change in her fosterfather gave her the first striking and definite illustration of its effect.
"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity."
"Now, what do you suppose that is?" Sir William Ware remarked, cocking his head a little as, stepping alongside John Nixon up Toddburn's main street, he approached the hotel door. The two had come into town with a load of wheat, which had been duly hoppered and weighed at the elevator. The team had been put in the livery stable, and the bell of the Toddburn House had just given intimation that dinner was "on".
"Oh, nothin'," replied John Nixon, although he smiled a little, "nothin' at all, Eng—Bill."
"Quite so," Ware commented, glancing at something long which moved and vociferated inside the hotel window, "but don't you think, Nixon, that it's a bit loud for nothing at all?"
"Well," conceded Nixon, as they went up the steps, "when I say 'nothin' at all', Bill, I mean it's something special. You ain't got used to us Canadians yet, I see. In other words, the occasion of yon rumpus is Long Tom Mewha. He's gittin' tanked up."
"Yeow-e-wow-e-yippyhoo!" Mr. Mewha was remarking, his arm rib-crackingly about a lesstall friend, as Nixon and Ware entered the hall of the Toddburn House, "Rip, slam, razzaberry jam! We don't care—do we, Joe. Whoa, you son of a moose, whoa!" This last as Joe coyly but vigorously endeavored to twist himself loose from the sociable arm.
"I'll turn you over my knee, an' spank you, Joe," Mr. Mewha reproved, pointing his words with a mighty slap that lifted Joe off his feet, "if you don't set still. We-e-ell—look who's with us!"
Long Tom—flinging away the unsteady Joe, who fetched up against the wall, eight feet away, with a window-rattling bang—turned to face Ware, who had just come through the hall door into the room.
"English!" he half-sung, "English, frum his scalp-lock to his moccasin-toes. Come here to me, English!"
Sir William's eye, gray, unwavering, infinitely friendly, met steadily the red-lidded glare of Long Tom Mewha—who emphasized his loud-toned invitation by rocking the upper part of his body from side to side, punctuating this movement with beckoning backward jerks of his head and crookings of a strong black-nailed forefinger.
"Come here to me," repeated Mr. Mewha, making a sound-box of his nostrils, "and do it sudden!"
He was a mighty man, in build, this Tom Mewha. Tough, long-sinewed, panther-shouldered, the seams of his buckskin coat straining under the twisting of a torso, muscle-flexed with the excitation of alcohol. He had a black moustache that swept below his chin on either side; a blunt nose skinned with frostbite; eyes aglow with virility and physical well-being; a forehead that just now was, from shaggy eyebrows to hair-roots, dotted and beaded with sweat. The incarnation of physical force; spurred to height of power by the liquor that had wakened every healthy artery to racing-pace: Long Tom could have taken any two of those who stood about him and without undue effort dashed their heads together. They all knew it, and stood back: all but Ware, the calm new-comer.
"Better give him his way, Bill," advised Nixon sotto voce, behind Ware's shoulder, "he's one bad-actor when he's pickled, if you go to cross him."
"I shan't cross him, old chap," Ware responded, a little drily, "nothing, in fact, was farther from my thoughts. How are you, Mr. Mewha?" He stepped forward, and held out a friendly hand.
"What do you-u mean," Mr. Mewha demanded, "by standin' in your tracks, like a bump on a log, after I holler 'come'. Do you know that I couldbust you right in two?" Ignoring Sir William's hand, the speaker inched close, scuffing his feet ominously over the creaking boards, thrusting his chin out, glaring like a stiffened and challenging beast.
"Exactly," the word came briefly, distinctly, clear-cut as a knuckle-tap on glass. "Will you shake hands."
Often, in the days that followed, John Nixon, thoughtful in his evening chair, reflected on those four words and the way Ware said them. The inflexion was smooth and even; the tone hardly more than gentle; the expression pleasant. But the effect—which Nixon and all those who stood about felt equally with the one to whom the words were addressed—was that of a mandate. Not a foolish command, proceeding from the habit of authority, without present power to exact obedience; but the serene, confident, all-potent fiat of brotherhood. Long Tom, at the moment the sentence was uttered, was in the attitude of a great animal about to spring. His face, shining with perspiration, was pushed close to Ware's; his hands, the fingers tensed and crooked, were raised to the level of the baronet's shoulders, preparatory to gripping. The great muscles were heaved up in a mound between his shoulders, giving him a stooping aspect. His eyes held shining points, like fire-sparks.
But the effect of the words was instantaneous. Nixon nor none of those about knew why nor how. All they knew was that Tom Mewha relaxed his threatening attitude; straightened to his full magnificent six feet four; swung up a hand.
"Put it there," he said: this Peril of the west.
Jim Burns thought he had never seen anything more girlishly attractive than his former playmate Daisy, as she romped over the honeycombed March drifts with Rover, the patriarchal but galvanized Nixon collie. An old wool cap of her mother's was perched on the side of her head; her hair was gathered in a careless braid behind; her skirt was of the shortest; her face had a schoolgirl color and a schoolgirl dance.
"Say, why d'n you wait for about ten years more anyway before you got married up, Daise?"
Daisy, as her chase of Rover brought her close, stopped and regarded her questioner teasingly. Rover waited, wagging from neck to tail like a young pup.
"I suppose you mean that you'd have been about ready to say something then, eh?" she remarked, putting her head on one side.
"No," said Jim Burns, a little shortly; "what I mean is, that you ought to be goin' to school instead of bein' married."
"Would you object to me being married, if I was married to you?" was Daisy's response, as she tweaked Rover's tail.
"Say, Daise," Jim Burns blurted out headlong a query he had carried around in his brain for some days, "why did you marry that old fellow? Wasn't there no young ones handy? I know you didn't marry him for his money: you ain't that kind. I can't figure the thing out nohow, Daise."
Daisy Ware's eyes, as she looked at her questioner silently for a moment, did not see him. Neither did they see the farm barn, the straw-bucks in the distance, the thawing ice at the cattle-trough, the drifts reduced to liquefying ice by the spring sun. For the girl was back in a massive ugly upstairs hall, with broom and dustpan, facing the son of a pile-driving millionaire who was trying to, after the pattern of his parent, "put her where she belonged;" in her memory again, as there had been on that occasion, a certain man equal in fortune but very different otherwise, who had in spite of his apparent fifty or so years, made her a boyish and eager proposal of marriage.
"Because," Daisy, this picture out of the past in her mind, answered Jim Burns unconsciously, by what was really a sentence thought aloud, "I wanted to show some people where they got off at."
Jim Burns' legs went numb at the vigor with which she said this. His hands opened loosely, and his pitchfork slid out of them.
"Well," he gulped, presently, "you needn't have went and did a trick like that. Why couldn't you have given me a hint, Daise?"
At this, Daisy came out of her reverie and stared.
"Given you a hint?" she repeated, "wha—o-oh I see. Well, that's what you get by being slow, Mr. Man. See!"
She caught Rover's tail, and raced away with him over the big drift that ran up to the top of the snow-flattened haystack. Jim Burns took off his hat and rubbed the back of his head till it tingled.
"Can't make head or tail of that'n," he said finally, replacing the weathered "dogskin" cap; "But I might asthim. Say—Iwillast him! I b'en a kind of a brother to the girl, and I got a right to know, ain't I?"
The chance to ask Ware, who had gone for a stroll about the farm with Nixon, did not present itself till toward evening. Then Burns, returning with the horse from the trough, met Sir William, thoughtfully inspecting the architecture of an old log wing of the stable.
"Clever work, that dovetailing, Burns," Ware said casually; then, as he noted that Jim Burns had halted and fixed him with a glance conveying what seemed to be determination, the baronet, said, briskly,
"Well, old chap? What is it?"
"I got something to say to you, sir," Jim Burns responded, setting his feet a little apart and squaring his shoulders.
"Say on," Ware invited, dropping his hands in his pockets, and regarding his catechist pleasantly.
"It's about Daise," Jim Burns went on, "I've knew her since she was a kid. We went to school together, and we was pretty good chums them days, and in fact right up to the time she skinned out with yon Beatty. I was figurin' I'd marry her some time (she claims I never said nothin', but I wouldn't have got no satisfaction anyway, if Ihadast her, which I guess after all I didn't, but she might have knew, for I didn't try to cover it up none). Well, now she comes back married up to you. O' course, the girl's her own boss, I know that. But—if you don't like me talkin' to you this way, sir, you'll have for to lump it; I never was one to hold back anything I got to say, not for no man—there seems to me to be somethin' queer, mighty queer, about the way you an' her yips along. You go out with Jack for a walk, or for a load o' hay, or off to town; and she hurrays around with the dog or me. Yous never seem to be together, nor neither one of you to care one rip what the other's doin'. And—now here's the place where maybe there's an apologycomin' to you for what I'm going to say, so I'm going to apologise first, and then go ahead—"
"Go on," said Sir William, gravely.
"I been brought up out here in the country," Jim Burns continued, a little more slowly, "and I don't know what they do in town, or over there where you come from; but out in this country, when two people are married, they're married. It don't matter whether he's old and she's young, or whether she's old and he's young. They're married, and they act married, and they stay married, or they don't get the respect of the settlement—and if they don't get that, they might as well be dead."
"Do go on," said Ware, his eyes alight. "I'm vastly interested, Burns. I am, really. What is your point?"
"The point," Daisy's schoolmate pursued, stoutly, "is just this. You sleep upstairs there, in the spare bed; and Daise, she still climbs into her old bunk downstairs, where she slept when she was a kid. Now," Jim's voice broke a little, "that suits me fine, for I'm sure I don't want to think of her as a married woman, married to somebody else. But it ain't right, and you know it ain't right. Yous two are married, and you ought to act married. First thing you know, some neighbor woman will notice it—one of the talky ones—and she'll put it around the whole district."
The speaker paused; cleared his throat; and went on:
"I know it ain't Daise's fault; for she was born in this country and she knows what's right; and whatever bargain she made, she'd stick to it. So I blame it onto you. Now, what's the matter? Ain't she good enough for you? If you didn't intend to treat her like a wife, why did you marry her? That's my point! I can't very well speak to Daise about it; so, as man to man, I put it up to you."
There were a few moments of silence after Jim Burns finished speaking. Something sincere and high in the quiet gray eyes across from him quelled his bristling earnestness.
"Dear old chap," said Sir William, dropping his hand on the other's shoulder, "first, don't think I wish any apology for what you have said. Secondly, be patient. That is all I may say in words, by way of reply to what I believe you have said in thorough sincerity: be patient, as I myself am patient. You will see that all will be well. Now—shall we speak of something else?"
"Why don't His Nobs go home out of the slush, and come back here when it's dry, if he wants to?" demanded, one night, Lovina Nixon of her husband, as he performed the ultimate evening ceremonial of whittling kindlings for the morning fire. "There's no sense of him and Daise wading around here through the mud, making four more feet to track my floor up, when they've got a comfortable home, with a dry sidewalk to it, laying idle in town. Now, is there?"
John Nixon, his sock-feet propped on the stove-pan, pushed hard with his jack-knife against a tough shaving, and allowed the usual interval to elapse before he made response.
"You claim to see everything," he remarked, finally, as the shaving split off and fell to the floor, "an' I guess you do. Like most of the weemen, there ain't much you miss. Ain't you noticed nothing about Bill's actions lately that might tell you why he stays around?"
Lovina came to attention, her hands at her hips.
"Why, no," she said, "I ain't. How could I?He spends most of his time out o' doors with you."
"Well," said her husband, "you can gener'ly take in things without lookin'—through the pores of your skin, like. Hasn't your sense of feelin' told you before now, that Bill's been bit by the farmin' bug?—bit hard, too!"
"What!" Lovina smiled incredulously; "why, he don't know a plow from a set of harrows. Have some sense, man."
"Don't he?" Nixon applied his knife again to the edge of the piece of pine board; "maybe he didn't when he first come out here, but there ain't much now he don't know. He's watched me blue-stonin' the seed wheat; he's had me take the fannin' mill apart to see what makes it go; and I guess I've plowed pretty near thirty acres for him, in pantomime, with the old breakin' plow, out there in the snow. No hired farmin' for Bill—he's a-goin' to do all the work himself."
"I pity his hands," Lovina Nixon observed, her knuckles at her chin reflectively. "Where's he gettin' his farm? Not going to buy us out, I suppose."
"Oh, we're fixin' that part of it," John Nixon, having finished the kindlings, folded his knife and returned it to his hip-pocket. "To keep you from gettin' any wrong notions into your head, I might say that he ain't goin' to buyusout,however. It's Jimmy Tomlinson's place he's gettin'. We're going over to see Jimmy to-morrow."
Jimmy Tomlinson, standing in the doorway of his bachelor cabin across the road-allowance from the Nixon farm, next morning welcomed glowingly the tall man in gray and the short broad man in overalls who drove up to his door in a muddy-spoke blackboard.
"Spring-like weather, Jim," said John Nixon, quizzically, as he pulled up the bay horse in the lee of the house bluff, "why ain't you down't the granary, picklin' up your seed?"
Jimmy Tomlinson merely grinned. He was uncommunicative and small and somewhere between fifty and sixty years old. To his gray flannel shirt he had this morning buttoned the celluloid collar which was always added to his attire when receiving callers or when working in his front field, which adjoined the Toddburn road. He had a little sandy moustache and a rather delicately-tipped chin which, as a cut in its cleft attested, had just been shaven.
"Putt in y'r horse," he said, in a thin high voice like a woman's, "tie him in the far stall, Jack. Come in, sir." This last to Sir William, upon whom the eyes of Mr. Tomlinson—who wanted $20,000, for his half-section—were fixed in timid appraisal.
Jimmy Tomlinson, who had been a countrybachelor for over half a century, now in his later but still sound and healthy years, wanted two things—to move into town, and to get married. His father had worked out in the harvest field when past ninety, and his mother had "run the house" unaided till her death at eighty-seven. Neither had ever had "a sick day"; so it was the reasonable expectation of their son, in his fifties, that he had between thirty and forty more comfortable years "above ground". As a result of a score and a half years of thrifty farming, Jimmy Tomlinson had $30,000 in bank. This, with the $20,000 which he intended to ask and to get for his farm, would make $50,000. If no young woman wanted a healthy bachelor with $50,000—even though slightly above the usual age at which married life is commenced—then the world had changed mightily from what it used to be. Besides, there was no law against a man wearing a toupee. And if—as said a certain beauty pamphlet which had come to Jimmy's house wrapped around a cake of toilet soap—massage and a certain kind of "cream" could do marvels with the wrinkles of womankind, where was the reason a man could not lock the door, plug up the keyhole, pull down the window-blind, and regain youthful beauty in the same way. Surely a man's fingers were his to use, and to look pretty is a legitimate ambition.
Jimmy had once thought of Daisy for his own; and it was therefore with a slight, but passing, tinge of envy that he now looked out of the corner of a diffident eye at her husband, who was after all no younger than himself.
Entering the house of Mr. Tomlinson, Sir William Ware found himself in a single log-walled room, of which the floor was tidily swept and the central small table covered with red oilcloth. On a shelf braced with home-sawn brackets, stood a round alarm clock, a coal-oil lamp and—their titled backs turned outward—a little pile of paper-bound books whose names suggested that they were love stories. On top of all was a department store catalogue, with the page turned back at the men's attire section. There were in the room three kitchen chairs and an old upholstered easy-chair, to the last of which Mr. Tomlinson escorted his guest.
"Jolly healthy out here, old chap," Ware remarked, as he sat down, in the chilly March-end breeze that blew in through the open door; "there must be a bit of an Old Country strain in you. Do you keep the door open all winter?"
"Pretty near all winter," said Jimmy Tomlinson, answering with the simple truth, "I'm outside most o' the time."
With this, he sat down diffidently, put his knees together, and spread his hands upon them; and,as Sir William was in a meditative mood, no more words passed between host and guest till Nixon came in from the stable.
"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business—eh, boys? Jim here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers just commencin' to make a little money."
"I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice.
"You've kep' your nose down to the grindstone for thirty-odd years, eh, and now you want a rest," prompted Nixon, slapping Tomlinson on the knee; "ain't that it, Jim?"
"I—I—yes, that's it," said the bachelor. "Thirty-three years," he continued—haltingly at first, but becoming fluent as he proceeded with the verbal expression of a dream that had been so often turned over in his mind that every detail of it was complete—"in storm and sunshine, neighbors, I've walked up and down between m' plow-handles and figured on the day when I could quit and take it easy and get married, like a civilized man—"
"Civilized?" put in John Nixon. "Jim, boy, the only man that keeps out of trouble is the man that has sense enough to stay single. Look athim, Bill! Why, he could shave off his mustache, hang a schoolbag over his shoulder, shorten up his pants, and start right in goin' to school, and nobody would know him from a fifteen-year-old boy. Look at him, and then look at us, the same age! Civilized! Jimmy, you take the advice of a man that knows, and stay uncivilized. Eh, Bill?"
"Now, now, Nixon," Ware shook a finger at his father-in-law. "Go on, Tomlinson."
"——like a civilized man," Tomlinson, wrapped up in his mental picture, resumed as though he had never been interrupted, "and see a little of town life and the things a man reads about. This is a mighty big world we're in, boys, and we don't see much of it from out here. Here in this settlement, every girl's either married or got a feller——"
"I thought it was the world you wanted to see, Jim——"
"Do shut-up, Nixon. Youarean incorrigible chap, you know. Don't mind him, Tomlinson. He really is interested, just as much as I am—that is to say, vastly. Please go on.
"——or got a feller," Jimmy Tomlinson continued, staring before him and unconsciously moving his hands on his knees with a species of animation, "and they won't look sideways at you, let alone make up to you——"
"Make up to you?" commented Nixon. "Didyou hear that, Bill—he wants them to make up to him. I don't want for to interrupt. But could you listen to that, and keep still? I can't! That's why you're still single, Jimmy—at fifty-six."
"Fifty-five past," corrected Jimmy Tomlinson, breaking the thread of his thought for the first time; then he went on, "it ain't right for a man to live all his lone, out here among the kyoots (coyotes), an' see nothin' at all of life. I was born and fetched up on a farm. My father, he married late in life—you know that, Jack—an' when I was born, my parents was both old. I was their first an' their last, an' I never had nobody to talk to—no brothers n'r sisters—so it's natural, ain't it, that I grew up kind of backward.
"Well, nobody has ever seemed to want for to talk to me, an' I ain't the kind that can push myself in; so I made up my mind, a long time ago, I'd stay in the shack here and save money; and when I got enough to pay my way, so I wouldn't have to ask no favors of nobody, nowhere, I'd sell out an' pack my grip and travel. I could have quit ten years ago or more, an' had worlds-an'-a-plenty of cash to carry me through; but I'm kind of slow to move, and I guess a feller gets more so as he gets older—not that I'm anyways old yet, you know——"
"Oh, no," said Nixon; "just beginnin' life, Jimmy—that's all."
"——and I guess I would have b'en here for another ten years maybe, Jack, if you and your friend hadn't come along. But I feel just as good now, better if anything, as I did at forty-five past, and I have considerable more money, so maybe it's just as well after all. Now," Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty thousand, cash down, takes this place—buildin's, stock, implements, what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is to hitch up my team—his team, it will be then—and drive me and my trunk into Toddburn. But I got to have the cash, right in my hand—no notes to worry over, no fear of the place comin' back onto me when I thought I was through with it, nothin' to worry about in this wide world. Well, sir?"
"Have you a pen and ink?" said Sir William, bustling from his chair to accommodate himself to the other's mood, moving over to a seat by the table, and laying his cheque-book on the red oilcloth.
Jimmy Tomlinson, his hands trembling with the excitement of this climactic moment of his wholelife, brought an old stone ink-bottle and a pen with a nib that sputtered like an angry cat as the baronet wrote.
An interval of quick writing; a brisk ripping sound, as perforated edges tore apart: and Jimmy Aleck Tomlinson, bachelor and recluse, held at last in his hand the small precious oblong slip which spelled emancipation from the farm life that had held the Tomlinsons of four tardy-marrying generations.
It was a final instinct of caution that made the vendor, a few moments later, as Nixon returned from the hitched buckboard for the leather mittens he had accidentally left on the window-sill, whisper hoarsely, "Is he good for it, Jack?"
"Good for it!" Nixon, drawing on the mittens, dealt Jimmy Tomlinson such a congratulatory whack on the shoulder that the latter took two involuntary steps forward; "good for it, Jimmy! Why, Bill yonder could buy up the whole settlement, with Toddburn throwed in for good measure, if he had any use for it."
"Well, I s'pose it's so, if you say it is, neighbor. He's your girl's man, and you ought to know, if anybody does. But somebody, I forget just who, was tellin' me he heard this Ware was goin' to run the farm himself, without hirin' any help. So naturally I figured, if that was so, he hadn't the money to pay a man."
"No, it ain't that," said John Nixon, as he turned toward the door; "it's true that he don't intend to hire any more men than he has to, and it's true that he's going to work right along with the ones he does hire. But when you say why—I don't know. All I know is, Bill's just a-pawin' the air to get to a pitchfork. Ain't that always the way, Jim?—ain't it, now? Nobody satisfied. Them that has to buck wood, like you an' me, don't want to. Them that don't have to, is fairly bawlin' and pawin' up the sod, to get to a sawhorse."
"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 justactsflirty," 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.Herhat wasalso 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'snotsorry, 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 intothe 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! therehasbeen 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 hearthadfluttered 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 thegirl 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 wasnothing 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?"