Part 11 (2/2)

”Take one of your own,” she instantly suggested.

”Do you think they wouldn't be too severe upon it?” I asked.

”Well, Mrs. Camp might,” Mrs. Makely consented, with a smile. ”She goes in for rather serious fiction; but I think Lizzie would enjoy a good, old-fas.h.i.+oned love-story, where everybody got married, as they do in your charming books.”

I winced a little, for every one likes to be regarded seriously, and I did not enjoy being remanded to the young-girl public; but I put a bold face on it, and said: ”My good action shall be done in behalf of Miss Lizzie.”

Half an hour later, Mrs. Makely having left word with the clerk where we were gone, so that her husband need not be alarmed when he got up, we were striking into the hills on a two-seated buckboard, with one of the best teams of our hotel, and one of the most taciturn drivers. Mrs. Makely had the Altrurian get into the back seat with her, and, after some attempts to make talk with the driver, I leaned over and joined in their talk. The Altrurian was greatly interested, not so much in the landscape--though he owned its beauty when we cried out over it from point to point--but in the human incidents and features. He noticed the cattle in the fields, and the horses we met on the road, and the taste and comfort of the buildings, the variety of the crops, and the promise of the harvest. I was glad of the respite his questions gave me from the study of the intimate character of our civilization, for they were directed now at these more material facts, and I willingly joined Mrs. Makely in answering them. We explained that the finest teams we met were from the different hotels or boarding-houses, or at least from the farms where the people took city people to board; and that certain shabby equipages belonged to the natives who lived solely by cultivating the soil. There was not very much of the soil cultivated, for the chief crop was hay, with here and there a patch of potatoes or beans, and a few acres in sweet-corn. The houses of the natives, when they were for their use only, were no better than their turnouts; it was where the city boarder had found shelter that they were modern and pleasant. Now and then we came to a deserted homestead, and I tried to make the Altrurian understand how farming in New England had yielded to the compet.i.tion of the immense agricultural operations of the West. ”You know,” I said, ”that agriculture is really an operation out there, as much as coal-mining is in Pennsylvania, or finance in Wall Street; you have no idea of the vastness of the scale.” Perhaps I swelled a little with pride in my celebration of the national prosperity, as it flowed from our Western farms of five and ten and twenty thousand acres; I could not very well help putting on the pedal in these pa.s.sages. Mrs. Makely listened almost, as eagerly, as the Altrurian, for, as a cultivated American woman, she was necessarily quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically, and historically. ”The only people left in the hill country of New England,” I concluded, ”are those who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any young man of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he wanted to keep a boarding-house or live on the city vacationists in summer. If he doesn't, he goes West and takes up some of the new land, and comes back in middle-life and buys a deserted farm to spend his summers on.”

”Dear me!” said the Altrurian. ”Is it so simple as that? Then we can hardly wonder at their owners leaving these worn-out farms; though I suppose it must be with the pang of exile, sometimes.”

”Oh, I fancy there isn't much sentiment involved,” I answered, lightly.

”Whoa!” said Mrs. Makely, speaking to the horses before she spoke to the driver, as some women will. He pulled them up, and looked round at her.

”Isn't that Reuben Camp, _now_, over there by that house?” she asked, as if we had been talking of him; that is another way some women have.

”Yes, ma'am,” said the driver.

”Oh, well, then!” and ”Reuben!” she called to the young man, who was prowling about the door-yard of a sad-colored old farm-house, and peering into a window here and there. ”Come here a moment--won't you, please?”

He lifted his head and looked round, and, when he had located the appeal made to him, he came down the walk to the gate and leaned over it, waiting for further instructions. I saw that it was the young man whom we had noticed with the girl Mrs. Makely called Lizzie on the hotel piazza the night before.

”Do you know whether I should find Lizzie at home this morning?”

”Yes, she's there with mother,” said the young fellow, with neither liking nor disliking in his tone.

”Oh, I'm so glad!” said the lady. ”I didn't know but she might be at church. What in the world has happened here? Is there anything unusual going on inside?”

”No, I was just looking to see if it was all right. The folks wanted I should come round.”

”Why, where are they?”

”Oh, they're gone.”

”Gone?”

”Yes; gone West. They've left the old place, because they couldn't make a living here any longer.”

”Why, this is quite a case in point,” I said. ”Now, Mr. h.o.m.os, here is a chance to inform yourself at first hand about a very interesting fact of our civilization”; and I added, in a low voice, to Mrs. Makely: ”Won't you introduce us?”

”Oh yes. Mr. Camp, this is Mr. Twelvemough, the author--you know his books, of course; and Mr. h.o.m.os, a gentleman from Altruria.”

The young fellow opened the gate he leaned on and came out to us. He took no notice of me, but he seized the Altrurian's hand and wrung it. ”I've heard of _you_” he said. ”Mrs. Makely, were you going to our place?”

”Why, yes.”

”So do, then. Mother would give almost anything to see Mr. h.o.m.os. We've heard of Altruria, over our way,” he added to our friend. ”Mother's been reading up all she can about it. She'll want to talk with you, and she won't give the rest of us much of a chance, I guess.”

”Oh, I shall be glad to see her,” said the Altrurian, ”and to tell her everything I can. But won't you explain to me first something about your deserted farms here? It's quite a new thing to me.”

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