Elder Conklin and Other Stories | Page 8

"I believe you boys jest love fightin' like dogs."
Jake disappeared to tell and retell the tale to any one who cared to listen.
Half an hour later Loo, who had climbed the bluff to command the view, heard the sound of Jack's feet on the wooden bridge. A moment or two more and the buggy drew up beside her; the schoolmaster bent forward and spoke, without a trace of emotion in his voice:
"Won't you get in and let me drive you home, Miss Loo?" His victory had put him in a good humour, without, however, altering his critical estimate of the girl. The quiet, controlled tone of his voice chilled and pained her, but her emotions were too recent and too acute to be restrained.
"Oh, George!" she said, leaning forward against the buggy, and scanning his face intently. "How can you speak so? You ain't hurt, are you?"
"No!" he answered lightly. "You didn't expect I should be, did you?" The tone was cold, a little sarcastic even.
Again she felt hurt; she scarcely knew why; the sneer was too far- fetched for her to understand it.
"Go and put the horse up, and then come back. I'll wait right here for you."
He did as he was told, and in ten minutes was by her side again. After a long pause, she began, with quivering lips:
"George, I'm sorry--so sorry. 'Twas all my fault! But I didn't know"-- and she choked down a sob--"I didn't think.
"I want you to tell me how your sisters act and--an' what they wear and do. I'll try to act like them. Then I'd be good, shouldn't I?
"They play the pianner, don't they?" He was forced to confess that one of them did.
"An' they talk like you?"
"Yes."
"An' they're good always? Oh, George, I'm jest too sorry for anythin', an' now--now I'm too glad!" and she burst into tears. He kissed and consoled her as in duty bound. He understood this mood as little as he had understood her challenge to love. He was not in sympathy with her; she had no ideal of conduct, no notion of dignity. Some suspicion of this estrangement must have dawned upon the girl, or else she was irritated by his acquiescence in her various phases of self-humiliation. All at once she dashed the tears from her eyes, and winding herself out of his arms, exclaimed:
"See here, George Bancroft! I'll jest learn all they know--pianner and all. I ken, and I will. I'll begin right now. You'll see!" And her blue eyes flashed with the glitter of steel, while her chin was thrown up in defiant vanity and self-assertion.
He watched her with indifferent curiosity; the abrupt changes of mood repelled him. His depreciatory thoughts of her, his resolution not to be led away again by her beauty influencing him, he noticed the keen hardness of the look, and felt, perhaps out of a spirit of antagonism, that he disliked it.
After a few quieting phrases, which, though they sprang rather from the head than the heart, seemed to achieve their aim, he changed the subject, by pointing across the creek and asking:
"Whose corn is that?"
"Father's, I guess!"
"I thought that was the Indian territory?"
"It is!"
"Is one allowed to sow corn there and to fence off the ground? Don't the Indians object?"
"'Tain't healthy for Indians about here," she answered carelessly, "I hain't ever seen one. I guess it's allowed; anyhow, the corn's there an' father'll have it cut right soon."
It seemed to Bancroft that they had not a thought in common. Wrong done by her own folk did not even interest her. At once he moved towards the house, and the girl followed him, feeling acutely disappointed and humiliated, which state of mind quickly became one of rebellious self- esteem. She guessed that other men thought big shucks of her anyway. And with this reflection she tried to comfort herself.
* * * * *
A week or ten days later, Bancroft came downstairs one morning early and found the ground covered with hoar-frost, though the sun had already warmed the air. Elder Conklin, in his shirt-sleeves, was cleaning his boots by the wood pile. When he had finished with the brush, but not a moment sooner, he put it down near his boarder. His greeting, a mere nod, had not prepared the schoolmaster for the question:
"Kin you drive kyows?"
"I think so; I've done it as a boy."
"Wall, to-day's Saturday. There ain't no school, and I've some cattle to drive to the scales in Eureka. They're in the brush yonder, ef you'd help. That is, supposin' you've nothin' to do."
"No. I've nothing else to do, and shall be glad to help you if I can."
Miss Loo pouted when she heard that her lover would be away the greater part of the day, but it pleased her to think that her