The Desired Woman | Page 8

of amusement, folded the sheet tantalizingly, and spat again.
"I don't know, Luce," he said to his wife, as he wiped his lips on his shirt-sleeve, "that it is a good time to tell you on top o' your complaint of over-work, but Dick Mostyn, your Atlanta boarder, writes that he's a little bit run down an' wants to come an' stay a solid month. Money seems to be no object to him, an' he says if he kin just git the room he had before an' a chance at your home cooking three times a day he will be in clover."
"Well, well, well!" Lucy cried, in a tone of delight, "so he wants to come ag'in, an' all this time I've been thinkin' he'd never think of us any more. There wasn't a thing for him to do that summer but lie around in the shade, except now an' then when he was off fishin' or huntin'."
"Well, I hope you will let 'im come," John Webb drawled out, in his slow fashion. "I can set an' study a town dude like him by the hour an' never git tired. I never kin somehow git at what sech fellers think about or do when they are at home. He makes money, but how? His hands are as soft an' white as a woman's. His socks are as thin an' flimsy as spider-webs. He had six pairs o' pants, if he had one, an' a pair o' galluses to each pair. I axed him one day when they was all spread out on his bed what on earth he had so many galluses for, an' Mostyn said--I give you my word I'm not jokin'--he said"-- Webb laughed out impulsively--"he said it was to keep from botherin' to button 'em on ever' time he changed! He said"--the bachelor continued to laugh--"that he could just throw the galluses over his shoulders when he was in a hurry an' be done with the job. Do you know, folks, if I was as lazy as that I'd be afraid the Lord would cut me off in my prime. Why, a feller on a farm has to do more than that ever' time he pulls a blade o' fodder or plants a seed o' corn."
"Well, of course, I want 'im to come." Mrs. Drake had not heard a word of her brother's rambling comment, and there was a decidedly expectant intonation in her voice. "Nobody's usin' the company-room, an' the presidin' elder won't be here till fall. Mr. Mostyn never was a bit of trouble and seemed to love everything I set before him. But I reckon we needn't feel so flattered. He's coming here so he'll be near Mr. Saunders when he runs up to his place on Sundays."
John Webb, for such a slow individual, had suddenly taken on a new impetus. He left his sister and her husband and passed through the passage bisecting the lower part of the plain two-story house and went out at the rear door. In the back yard he found his nephew, George Drake, a boy of fifteen years, seated on the grass repairing a ragged, mud-stained fish-net.
"Who told you you could be out o' school, young feller?" John demanded, dryly. "I'll bet my life you are playin' hookey. You think because your sister's the teacher you can run wild like a mountain shote. My Lord, look at your clothes! I'll swear it would be hard to tell whether you've got on anything or not--that is, anything except mud an' slime. Have you been tryin' to pull that seine through the creek by yourself?"
The boy, who had a fine head and profile and was stoutly built and generally good-looking, was too busy with his strings and knots to look up. "Some fool left it in the creek, and it's laid there for the last month," he mumbled. "I had to go in after it, and it was all tangled up and clogged with mud. Dolly knew I wasn't going to school to-day."
"She knew it when you didn't turn up at roll-call, I bound you," Webb drawled. "Say, do you know a young gal like her ain't strong enough to lick scholars as sound as they ought to be licked, and thar is some talk about appointin' some able-bodied man that lives close about to step in an' sort o' clean up two or three times a week. I don't know but what I'd like the job. A feller that goes as nigh naked as you do would be a blame good thing to practise on."
"Huh!" the boy sniffed, as he tossed back his shaggy brown hair. "You talk mighty big. I'd like to see you try to whip me--I shore would."
"Well, I may give you the chance if Dolly calls