Part 3 (2/2)
What a fine morning to be out!” and she settled back comfortably as the machine gathered speed. ”I do love a machine, but father is rather backward about them. He will consent to ride in them under necessity, but he won't buy one. Every time he sees a handsome pair of horses, however, he has to have them.”
”I admire a good horse myself,” returned Sam.
”Do you ride?” she asked him.
”Oh, I have suffered a few times on horseback,” he confessed; ”but you ought to see my kid brother ride. He looks as if he were part of the horse. He's a handsome brat.”
”Except for calling him names, which is a purely masculine way of showing affection, you speak of him almost as if you were his mother,”
she observed.
”Well, I am, almost,” replied Sam, studying the matter gravely. ”I have been his mother, and his father, and his brother, too, for a great many years; and I will say that he's a credit to his family.”
”Meaning just you?” she ventured.
”Yes, we're all we have; just yet, at least.” This quite soberly.
”He must talk of getting married,” she guessed, with a quick intuition that when this happened it would be a blow to Sam.
”Oh, no,” he immediately corrected her. ”He isn't quite old enough to think of it seriously as yet. I expect to be married long before he is.”
Miss Stevens felt a rigid aloofness creeping over her, and, having a very wholesome sense of humor, smiled as she recognized the feeling in herself.
”I should think you'd spend your vacation where the girl is,” she observed. ”Men usually do, don't they?”
He laughed gaily.
”I surely would if I knew the girl,” he a.s.serted.
”That's a refres.h.i.+ng suggestion,” she said, echoing his laugh, though from a different impulse. ”I presume, then, that you entertain thoughts of matrimony merely because you think you are quite old enough.”
”No, it isn't just that,” he returned, still thoughtfully. ”Somehow or other I feel that way about it; that's all. I have never had time to think of it before, but this past year I have had a sort of sense of lonesomeness; and I guess that must be it.”
In spite of herself Miss Josephine giggled and repressed it, and giggled again and repressed it, and giggled again, and then she let herself go and laughed as heartily as she pleased. She had heard men say before, but always with more or less of a languis.h.i.+ng air, inevitably ridiculous in a man, that they thought it about time they were getting married; but she could not remember anything to compare with Sam Turner's navete in the statement.
He paid no attention to the laughter, for he had suddenly leaned forward to the chauffeur.
”There is another clump of walnut trees,” he said, eagerly pointing them out. ”Are there many of them in this locality?”
”A good many scattered here and there,” replied the boy; ”but old man Gifford has a twenty-acre grove down in the bottoms that's mostly all walnut trees, and I heard him say just the other day that walnut lumber's got so high he had a notion to clear his land.”
”Where do you suppose we could find old man Gifford?” inquired Mr.
Turner.
”Oh, about six miles off to the right, at the next turning.”
”Suppose we whizz right down there,” said Sam promptly, and he turned to Miss Stevens with enthusiasm s.h.i.+ning in his eyes. ”It does seem as if everything happens lucky for me,” he observed. ”I haven't any particular liking for the lumber business, but fate keeps handing lumber to me all the time; just fairly forcing it on me.”
”Do you think fate is as much responsible for that as yourself?” she questioned, smiling as they pa.s.sed at a good clip the turn which was to have taken them over the pretty Bald Hill drive. Sam had not even thought to apologize for the abrupt change in their program, because she could certainly see the opportunity which had offered itself, and how imperative it was to embrace it. The thing needed no explanation.
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