Part 6 (1/2)
”Why, what's the matter with the one y' got on? Ain't no holes in it that I can see,” looking at it carefully and turning her around as if she were on a pivot.
”Well, ain't it purty short, pap?” she said suggestively.
”I swear, I don't know but it is,” conceded Anson, scratching his head; ”I hadn't paid much 'tention to it before. It certainly is a lee-tle too short. Lemme see: ain't no way o' lettin' it down, is they?”
”Nary. She's clean down to the last notch now,” replied Flaxen convincingly.
”Couldn't pull through till we thrash?” he continued, still in a tentative manner.
”Could, but don't like to,” she answered, laughing again, and showing her white teeth pleasantly.
”I s'pose it'll cost suthin',” he insinuated in a dubious tone.
”Mattie Stuart paid seven dollars fer her'n, pap, an' I----”
”Seven how manys?”
”Dollars, pap, makin' an' everythin'. An' then I ought to have a new hat to go with the dress, an' a new pair o' shoes. All the girls are wearin' white, but I reckon I can git along with a good coloured one that'll do fer winter.”
”Wal, all right. I'll fix it--some way,” Ans said, turning away only to look back and smile to see her dancing up and down and crying:
”Oh, goody, goody!”
”I'll do it if I haf to borrow money at two per cent a month,” said he to Bert, as he explained the case. ”Hear her sing! Why, dern it! I'd spend all I've got to keep that child twitterin' like that. Wouldn't you, eh?”
Bert was silent, thinking deeply on a variety of matters suggested by Anson's words. The crickets were singing from out the weeds near by; a lost little wild chicken was whistling in plaintive sweetness down in the barley-field; the flaming light from the half-sunk sun swept along the green and yellow grain, glorifying as with a bath of gold everything it touched.
”I wish that grain hadn't ripened so fast, Ans. It's blightin'.”
”Think so?”
”No: I know it. I went out to look at it before supper, an' every one of those spots that look so pretty are just simply burnin' up! But, say, ain't it a little singular that Flaxen should blossom out in a desire for a new dress all at once? Ain't it rather sudden?”
”Wal, no: I don't think it is. Come to look it all over, up one side an' down the other, she's been growin' about an inch a month this summer, an' her best dress is gittin' turrible short the best way you can fix it. She's gittin' to be 'most a woman, Bert.”
”Yes: I know she is,” said Bert, significantly. ”An' something's got to be done right off.”
”Wha' d' ye mean by that, ol' man?”
”I mean jest this. It's time we did something religious for that girl.
She ain't had much chance since she's been here with us. She ain't had no chance at all. Now I move that we send her away to school this winter. Give her a good outfit an' send her away. This ain't no sort o'
way for a girl to grow up in.”
”Wal, I've be'n thinkin' o' that myself; but where'll we send her?”
”Oh, back to the States somewhere; Wisconsin or Minnesota--somewhere.”
”Why not to Boomtown?”
”Well, I'll tell yeh, Ans. I've been hearing a good 'eal off an' on about the way we're bringin' her up here 'alone with two rough old codgers,' an' I jest want to give her a better chance than the Territory affords. I want her to git free of us and all like us, for a while; let her see something of the world. Besides, that business over in Belleplain to-day kind o' settled me. The plain facts are, Ans, the people are a little too free with her because she is growin' up here----”