Part 8 (1/2)

Next day a more startling thing happened. Twice each week there pa.s.sed through the country, from farm to farm, a butcher's wagon from Shelbyville, the county-seat, a few miles away. Isom Chase never had been a customer of the fresh meat purveyor, and the traveling merchant, knowing from the old man's notoriety that he never could expect him to become one, did not waste time in stopping at his house. His surprise was almost apoplectic when Isom stopped him and bought a soup-bone, and it almost became fatal when the order was made a standing one. It was such a remarkable event that the meat man told about it at every stop.

It went round the country like the news of a wedding or a death.

Isom seemed to be satisfied with the new dietary regulations, for hams were cheap that summer, anyhow, and the season was late. Besides that, the more that Joe ate the harder he worked. It seemed a kind of spontaneous effort on the lad's part, as if it was necessary to burn up the energy in surplus of the demand of his growing bone and muscle.

Ollie had picked up and brightened under the influence of ham and milk also, although it was all a foolish yielding to appet.i.te, as Isom very well knew. He had beaten that weakness in himself to death with the club of abstinence; for himself he could live happily on what he had been accustomed to eating for thirty years and more. But as long as the investment of ham and milk paid interest in kitchen as well as field, Isom was grudgingly willing to see them consumed.

Ollie's brightening was only physical. In her heart she was as gloomily hopeless as before. After his first flash of fire she had not found much comfort or hope of comrades.h.i.+p in the boy, Joe Newbolt. He was so respectful in her presence, and so bashful, it seemed, that it almost made her uncomfortable to have him around.

Man that he was in stature, he appeared no more than a timid boy in understanding, and her little advances of friendliness, her little appeals for sympathy, all glanced from the unconscious armor of his youthful innocence and reserve. She was forced to put him down after many weeks as merely stupid, and she sighed when she saw the hope of comrades.h.i.+p in her hard lot fade out and give way to a feeling bordering upon contempt.

On Sunday evenings, after he came back from visiting his mother, Ollie frequently saw Joe reading the little brown Bible which he had carried with him when he came. She had taken it up one day while making Joe's bed. It brought back to her the recollection of her Sunday-school days, when she was all giggles and frills; but there was no a.s.sociation of religious training to respond to its appeal. She wondered what Joe saw in it as she put it back on the box beside his bed.

It chanced that she met Joe the next morning after she had made that short incursion between the brown covers of his book, as she was returning from the well and he was setting out for the hog-lot between two pails of sour swill. He stood out of the path to let her pa.s.s without stepping into the long, dewy gra.s.s. She put her bucket down with a gasp of weariness, and looked up into his eyes with a smile.

The buckets were heavy in Joe's hands; he stood them down, meeting her friendly advances with one of his rare smiles, which came as seldom to his face, thought she, as a hummingbird to the honeysuckle on the kitchen porch.

”Whew, this is going to be a scorcher!” said she.

”I believe it is,” he agreed.

From the opposite sides of the path their eyes met. Both smiled again, and felt better for it.

”My, but you're a mighty religious boy, aren't you?” she asked suddenly.

”Religious?” said he, looking at her in serious surprise.

She nodded girlishly. The sun, long slanting through the cherry-trees, fell on her hair, loosely gathered up after her sleep, one free strand on her cheek.

”No, I'm not religious.”

”Well, you read the Bible all the time.”

”Oh, well!” said he, stooping as if to lift his pails.

”Why?” she wanted to know.

Joe straightened his long back without his pails. Beyond the orchard the hogs were clamoring shrilly for their morning draught; from the barn there came the sound of Isom's voice, speaking harshly to the beasts.

”Well, because I like it, for one thing,” said he, ”and because it's the only book I've got here, for another.”

”My, I think it's awful slow!” said she.

”Do you?” he inquired, as if interested in her likes and dislikes at last.

”I'd think you'd like other books better--detective stories and that kind,” she ventured. ”Didn't you ever read any other book?”

”Some few,” he replied, a reflection as of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes, which she thought made them look old and understanding and wise. ”But I've always read the Bible. It's one of the books that never seems to get old to you.”

”Did you ever read _True as Steel_?”