Part 5 (1/2)
”There'll be plenty of your friends left,” said Esther. She had half turned her head, and was looking wonderfully pretty in her new leghorn hat with the corn-flowers and poppies.
”Oh!” he said, reproachfully; but he had no chance to say anything more just then, for the preacher claimed her attention.
”How far East are you going?” he asked.
”To mother's old home in New England,” said the girl. The preacher gave a surprised whistle. ”Was your mother raised back there?” he demanded.
”Well, I never should have known but she was a born Hoosier.”
As a born Hoosier herself the young lady appreciated the compliment.
”No,” she said, ”mother came from Ma.s.sachusetts; but she's lived here twenty years, and I don't suppose there's much difference now.”
”Oh, we'll let her have the name now,” said the preacher, good-naturedly. ”But it's queer I never heard her say a word about 'Boston.'”
”She didn't come from Boston,” said Esther. ”There's ever so much of New England outside of Boston, you know.”
”'Pears to cover the whole ground for most Yankees,” said the preacher, dryly. ”I don't recollect as I ever talked with any of 'em-except your mother-that it didn't leak out mighty quick if they'd come from anywheres near the 'Hub.' 'Peared to carry it round as a sort of measuring stick, to size up everything else by.”
His figure was a trifle mixed, but it met the case. After a moment he added: ”Well, I'm right glad you're going. It's a good thing for young folks to see something of the world outside of the home corner. I always thought I'd like to travel a bit myself, but I reckon I'll never get to do it any other way than going round with a thres.h.i.+ng machine, and that don't exactly hit my notion of travelling for pleasure. Eh, Mort?” he queried, turning to the young man behind him.
The latter was not in a mood to feel the full humor of the remark, which he had heard in spite of his apparent attention to Kate's lively chatter. ”Can't say there's much variety in it,” he replied rather absently.
”However,” continued the preacher, turning again to Esther, ”I did go to Kentucky once when I was a little chap. No,” he said, shaking his head, as he caught the eager question in her eyes, ”not in the Blue Gra.s.s country where your father was raised, but in among the k.n.o.bs where the c.u.mberlands begin. It was a mighty poor rough country. I reckon you'll see something of the same sort where you're going.”
”Oh, but that is a beautiful country! Mother has always said so,” cried the girl, looking quite distressed.
”Well, maybe you'd call that country down there pretty too,” said the preacher, with easy accommodation, ”though it's all in a heap, and rocks all over it. Reminds me of the story about a soldier from somewhere hereabouts that was going through there in the war-time, and stopped to talk a minute with a fellow that was hoeing corn. 'Well, stranger,' says he, 'reckon you're about ready to move out of here.' 'Why so?' says the fellow, looking sort of stupid. 'Why, I see you've got the land all rolled up ready to start,' says the soldier.”
The preacher interrupted his mellow drawl for a moment to join in her laugh at the story, then went on: ”Now my notion of a pretty country is one that looks as if you could raise something on it; the sort we've got round here, you know,” he added, stretching out his arm with an inclusive gesture.
His idea of landscape beauty was not Esther Northmore's, but as she looked at that moment over the peaceful country, golden and green with its generous harvests, with here and there a stretch of forest rising tall and straight against the sky, she felt its quiet charm with a thrill of pride and gladness. ”Yes; this is a beautiful country,” she said softly. ”I shall never change my mind about that.”
They had reached a point where another road crossed the one they were following, and the preacher paused in his walk. ”I must turn off here,”
he said. ”Good-by! and take care of yourselves.” He shook hands heartily with each of the girls, and added, with a nod at Esther: ”Give my special regards to your mother. Tell her I've just found out that she's a Yankee, and I don't think any less of her for it.”
He was an odd genius, this New Light preacher. The Northmores were by no means of his flock, but the feeling between them was most cordial. In his office of comforter he had touched that of the healer more than once among the families under his care, and the touch had left a mutual respect between him and the doctor. With Mrs. Northmore the feeling was even warmer. Rough and ill-educated as he was, there was a native force and shrewdness in the man by no means common, and they were joined with a frank honesty which would have attracted her in a far less interesting person than he.
Morton Elwell walked on to the house, but refused the girls' invitation to come in to supper. ”You know mother would like to have you,” Esther said, with polite urgence. ”She was complaining the other day that we saw so little of you.”
But Morton was resolute. Perhaps the thresher's costume in which he was arrayed, the blue flannel s.h.i.+rt, jean trousers, and heavy boots, none too black, helped him to stand by the promise he had given Mrs. Elwell.
”No,” he said; ”I told Aunt Jenny I wouldn't fail to come home to supper.” But he leaned on the gate when he had opened it for the girls, and stood for a minute as if he found it hard to turn away.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”HE LEANED ON THE GATE WHEN HE HAD OPENED IT FOR THE GIRLS.”]
”Of course you'll write to me first,” he said, glancing from one to the other. There had been a correspondence of a desultory sort between them ever since he went away to college, and he seemed to take for granted that it would go on now. And then he added, looking to Esther, ”You wrote to me real often when you were a little girl, and went to your grandfather's before.”
Her color rose a trifle. ”You have a remarkably good memory, Mort, to remember such little things when they happened so long ago,” she said lightly.
”Why, I've got every one of them now,” he replied. ”I was looking them over not so very long ago, and they were the jolliest kind of letters, with little postscripts added by Kate in cipher. She was five, I believe, then. They were joint productions in those days, but you needn't feel obliged to make them so now.”