The Early Bird | Page 9

to the disconsolate Hollis, who was "hard hit" with a
different girl every season. "It's just about a two-hour trip. 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 asserted.
"That's a refreshing 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 languishing 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
naïveté 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 shining 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 passed 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.
"I don't know," he replied to her query, after pausing to consider it a
moment. "I certainly don't go out of my road to hunt up these things."
"No-o-o-o," she admitted. "But fate hasn't thrust this particular
opportunity upon me, although I'm right with you at the time. It never
would have occurred to me to ask about those walnut trees."
"It would have occurred to your father," he retorted quickly.
"Yes, it might have occurred to father, but I think that under the
circumstances