ELGA.

Bert looked at the picture over Anson's shoulder, but did not seem to pay much attention to it.

"Wal, I'll go out an' shut the barn door. Nights git cold after the sun goes down. You needn't peel the 'taters to-night. We'll bake 'em, brussels an' all, to-morrow mornin'."

When Anson had gone, Bert s.n.a.t.c.hed up the picture with great eagerness and gazed upon it with a steady, devouring glance. How womanly she looked with her hair done up so, and the broad, fair face and full bosom.

He heard Anson returning from the barn, and hastily laid the picture down, and when Anson entered was apparently dropping off to sleep.

CHAPTER X.

FLAXEN COMES HOME ON A VACATION.

It was in June, just before the ending of the school, that Flaxen first began to write about delaying her return. Anson was wofully disappointed. He had said all along that she would make tracks for home just as soon as school was out, and he had calculated just when she would arrive; and on the second day after the close of school for the summer he drove down to the train to meet her. She did not come, but he got a letter which said that one of her friends wanted her to stay two weeks with her, until after the Fourth of July.

"She's an awful nice girl, and we will have a grand time; she has a rich father and a piano and a pony and a buggy. It will just be grand."

"I don't blame her none," sighed Anson to Bert. "I don't want her to come away while she's enjoyin' herself. It'll be a big change for her to come back an' cook f'r us old mossbacks after bein' at school an' in good company all these months."

He was plainly disturbed. Her vacation was going to be all too short at the best, and he was so hungry for the sight of her! Still, he could not blame her for staying, under the circ.u.mstances; as he told Bert, his feelings did not count. He just wanted her to got all she could out of life; "there ain't much, anyway, for us poor devils; but what little there is we want her to have."

The Fourth of July was the limit of her stay, and on the sixth, seventh, and eighth Anson drove regularly to the evening train to meet her.

On the third day another letter came, saying that she would reach home the next Monday. With this Anson rode home in triumph. During the next few days he went to the barber's and had his great beard shaved off.

"Made me look so old," he explained, seeing Bert's wild start of surprise. "I've be'n carryin' that mop o' hair round so long I'd kind o' got into the notion o' bein' old myself. Got a kind o' crick in the back, y' know. But I ain't; I ain't ten years older'n you be."

And he was not. His long blond moustache, shaved beard, and clipped hair made a new man of him, and a very handsome man, too, in a large way. He was curiously embarra.s.sed by Bert's prolonged scrutiny, and said jocosely:

"We've got to brace up a little now. Company boarders comin', young lady from St. Peter's Seminary, city airs an' all that sort o' thing.

Don't you let me see you eatin' pie with y'r knife. I'll break the shins of any man that feeds himself with anythin' 'cept the silver-plated forks I've bought."

Flaxen had been gone almost a year, and a year counts for much at her age. Besides, Anson had exaggerated ideas of the amount of learning she could absorb in a year at a boarding-seminary, and he had also a very vague idea of what "society" was in St. Peter, although he seemed suddenly to awake to the necessity of "bracing up" a little and getting things generally into shape. He bought a new suit of clothes and a second-hand two-seated carriage, notwithstanding the sarcastic reflection of his partner, who was making his own silent comment upon this thing.

"The paternal business is _auskerspeelt_," he said to himself. "Ans is goin' in on shape now. Well, it's all right; n.o.body's business but ours. Let her go, Smith; but they won't be no talk in this neighbourhood when they get hold of what's goin' on--oh, no!" He smiled grimly. "We can stand it, I guess; but it'll be hard on her. Ans is a little too previous. It's too soon to spring this trap on the poor little thing."

They stood side by side on the platform the next Monday when the train rolled into the station at Boomtown, panting with fatigue from its long run. Flaxen caught sight of Bert first as she sprang off the train, and running to him, kissed him without much embarra.s.sment. Then she looked around, saying:

"Where's ol' pap? Didn't he----"

"Why, Flaxen, don't ye know me?" he cried out at her elbow.

She knew his voice, but his shaven face, so much more youthful, was so strange that she knew him only by his eyes laughing down into hers.

Nevertheless she kissed him doubtfully.

"Oh, what've you done? You've shaved off your whiskers; you don't look a bit natural. I----"

She was embarra.s.sed, almost frightened, at the change in him. He "looked so queer"; his fair, untroubled, smiling face and blond moustache made him look younger than Bert.

"Nev' mind that! She'll grow again if y' like it better. Get int' this new buggy--it's ours. They ain't no flies on us to-day; not many," said Ans in high glee, elaborately a.s.sisting her to the carriage, not appreciating the full meaning of the situation.

As they rode home he was extravagantly gay. He sat beside her, and she drove, wild with delight at the prairie, the wheat, the gulls, everything.

"Ain't no dust on our clo'es," said Ans, coughing, winking at Bert, and brushing off with an elaborately finical gesture an imaginary fleck from his knee and elbow. "Ain't we togged out? I guess n.o.body said 'boo' to us down to St. Peter, eh?"

"You like my clo'es?" said Flaxen, with charming directness.

"You bet! They're scrumptious."

"Well, they ought to be; they're my best, except my white dress. I thought you'd like 'em; I wore 'em a-purpose."

"Like 'em? They're--you're jest as purty as a red lily er a wild rose in the wheat--ahem! Ain't she, Bert, ol' boy? We're jest about starvin'

to death, we are."

"I knew you'd be. What'll I stir up for supper? Biscuits?"

"Um, um! Say, what y' s'pose I've got to go with 'em?"

"Honey."

"Oh, you're too sharp," wailed Ans, while Flaxen went off into a peal of laughter. "Say, Bert's be'n in the _d.a.m.nedest_--excuse me--plaguedest temper fer the last two munce as you ever did see."

While this chatter was going on Bert sat silent and unsmiling on the back seat. He was absorbed in seeing the exquisite colour that played in her check and the equally charming curves of her figure. She was well dressed and was wonderfully mature. He was saying to himself: "Ans ain't got no more judgment than a boy. We can't keep that girl here.

More'n that, the girl never'll be contented again, unless----" He did not allow himself to go farther. He dared not even think farther.

They had a merry time that night, quite like old times. The biscuits were light and flaky, the honey was delightsome, and the milk and b.u.t.ter (procured specially) were fresh. They shouted in laughter as Flaxen insisted on their eating potatoes with a fork, and opposed the use of the knife in scooping up the honey from their plates! Even the saturnine Bert forgot his gloom and laughed too, as Ans laboriously dipped his honey with a fork, and, finally growing desperate, split a biscuit in half, and in the good old boyish way sopped it in the honey.

"There, that's the Christian way of doing things!" he exulted, while Flaxen laughed. How bright she was--how strange she acted! There were moments when she embarra.s.sed them by some new womanly grace or accomplishment, some new air which she had caught from her companions or teachers at school. It was truly amazing how much she had absorbed outside of her regular studies. She indeed was no longer a girl; she was a young woman, and to them a beautiful one.

Not a day pa.s.sed without some added surprise which made Anson exult and say, "She's gettin' her money's worth down there--no two ways about that."

CHAPTER XI.

FLAXEN GROWS RESTLESS.

But as the excitement of getting back died out, poor Flaxen grew restless, moody, and unaccountable. Before, she had always been the same cheery, frank, boyish creature. As Bert said, "You know where to find her." Now she was full of strange tempers and moods. She would work most furiously for a time, and then suddenly fall dreaming, looking away out on the shimmering plain toward the east.

At Bert's instigation, a middle-aged widow had been hired, at a fabulous price, to come and do the most of the work for them, thus releasing Flaxen from the weight of the hard work, which perhaps was all the worse for her. Hard work might have prevented the unbearable, sleepless pain within. She hated the slatternly Mrs. Green at once for her meddling with her affairs, though the good woman meant no offence.

She was jocose in the broad way of middle-aged persons, to whom a love-affair is legitimate food for raillery.

But Gearheart's keen eye was on Flaxen as well. He saw how eagerly she watched for the mail on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how she sought a quiet place at once in order to read and dream over her letters. She was restless a day or two before a certain letter came, with an eager, excited, expectant air. Then, after reading it, she was absent-minded, flighty in conversation, and at last listlessly uneasy, moving slowly about from one thing to another, in a kind of restless inability to take continued interest in anything.