Everybodys Chance | Page 8

equally good for you I want to ease my mind by giving you some good advice. You ought to do just what I have done, determining, as I did, that whatever else had to be done afterward I would do with all my might, or make a better man of myself while failing. Why don't you do it? Have you proposed yet?"
"No!"
"Doesn't the girl even know that you love her?"
"No. I don't see, at least, how she can know it."
"That's bad-- for her. 'Twould make life a very different thing for any woman in this dead-and-alive town to know that a man like you cared for her. Women in Brundy-- young women-- have a pretty dismal outlook. I'm not going again to ask you who she is, but I do wish I knew, for I'd take the responsibility of telling her; after that she'd wait forever, and be happy in spite of anything, to know that there was such great good fortune in store for her."
"You'd tell her, would you?" snarled Chump. "I've a great mind to let you, just to see what a flunk you would make of it, you--"
"I dare you to do it," said Charley, meeting Champ's scowl without flinching. The older man glared furiously, and suddenly betook himself again to his axe, dashing at the tree as if it were his rival himself. But Charley's blood also was up, and he went on, shouting so that his words should not be drowned by the shower of axe-strokes.
"Yes, I dare you. I don't care a bit for your temper; you're a first-rate fellow in spite of it, and the woman who doesn't know that you love her shall know it at once if I can find out who she is."
Champ faced about, dropped his axe, controlled his face, and said, with manly dignity:
"She is Luce Grew."
"Luce!" exclaimed Charley, staggering backward.
"Yes, Luce. Now do you know why you won't tell her? It is because I love her, and want her to be happy, that I've thrown this job into your hands this morning. She has accepted you; well, that is her own business, and her own right, and no one else has the slightest use for complaining. But mark my words, young man. I never shall annoy her in any way, but I shall never cease to love her. On the other hand, if you fail to be to her everything that you've promised and everything that is in your power, you will have me to reckon with. She's one of your chances; this job of wood-chopping is another; if you don't take as industriously to this as you do to the other, don't ever speak to me again anywhere, in any circumstances, and be careful to keep out of my path Good-morning."

III -- "THEY SAY--"
Although Luce had enjoined secrecy upon Charley, and protested against publicity being given by acts and manners any more than by words, she found Charley's society so pleasant that she had not the heart to forbid him to call frequently. She discouraged all attempts at effusive love-making; but she could not help being interested and cheered by the young man's enthusiasm, for the people of Brundy seldom found anything to be enthusiastic about, and as Luce was a great-hearted creature her lover's irrepressible spirits made good the lack of something which she often felt.
But how can any one keep a secret in a town where the people have only other people's affairs to occupy their leisure moments? Within a week everybody was telling everybody else that Charley Wurring had been three times-- some said four-- to the Grews' since the night of the lecture, and that it must mean something; as Luce was the only adult girl in the family, and there were no young men among her brothers, public opinion was not long in determining what the something was. Luce was not the kind of girl of whom girls in general ask leading questions, but it needs not direct statements to establish anything which a lot of gossips desire to believe, so that in less than another week all Brundy, despite Charley's evasions, regarded the couple as fully engaged, and discussed them accordingly at shops, the post-office, and wherever else men and women chanced to meet.
"It seems too bad," said one of the village pastors at a grocer's, where he chanced to meet old Pruffett. "I am not given to romance-- my calling forbids it, through the stern realities which I am obliged to encounter in the experiences of my flock; but that girl has always seemed to me to be worthy of far greater opportunities than our village affords, yet now she seems to have given herself to a young man who shows as few signs of rising as any one