The End of the World | Page 5

the lines:
"Yet weep, soft children of the Spring; The feelings Love alone can
bring Have been denied to you!"
With the quick and crafty modesty of her sex, Julia evaded this very
pleasant shaft by saying: "How much you know, August! How do you
learn it?"
[Illustration: A TALK WITH A PLOWMAN.]
And August was pleased, partly because of the compliment, but chiefly
because in saying it Julia had brought the sun-bonnet in such a range
that he could see the bright eyes and blushing face at the bottom of this
_camera-oscura_. He did not hasten to reply. While the vision lasted he
enjoyed the vision. Not until the sun-bonnet dropped did he take up the
answer to her question.
"I don't know much, but what I do know I have learned out of your
Uncle Andrew's books."
"Do you know my Uncle Andrew? What a strange man he is! He never
comes here, and we never go there, and my mother never speaks to him,
and my father doesn't often have anything to say to him. And so you
have been at his house. They say he has all up-stairs full of books, and
ever so many cats and dogs and birds and squirrels about. But I thought

he never let anybody go up-stairs."
"He lets me," said August, when she had ended her speech and dropped
her sun-bonnet again out of the range of his eyes, which, in truth, were
too steadfast in their gaze. "I spend many evenings up-stairs." August
had just a trace of German in his idiom.
"What makes Uncle Andrew so curious, I wonder?"
"I don't exactly know. Some say he was treated not just right by a
woman when he was a young man. I don't know. He seems happy. I
don't wonder a man should be curious though when a woman that he
loves treats him not just right. Any way, if he loves her with all his
heart, as I love Jule Anderson!"
These last words came with an effort. And Julia just then remembered
her errand, and said, "I must hurry," and, with a country girl's agility,
she climbed over the fence before August could help her, and gave him
another look through her bonnet-telescope from the other Hide, and
then hastened on to return the tea, und to tell Mrs. Malcolm that there
was to be a Millerite preacher at the school-house on Sunday night.
And August found that his horses were quite cool, while he was quite
hot. He cleaned his mold board, and swung his plow round, and then,
with a "Whoa! haw!" and a pull upon the single line which Western
plowmen use to guide their horses, he drew the team into their place,
and set himself to watching the turning of the rich, fragrant black earth.
And even as he set his plowshare, so he set his purpose to overcome all
obstacles, and to marry Julia Anderson. With the same steady,
irresistible, onward course would he overcome all that lay between him
and the soul that shone out of the face that dwelt in the bottom of the
sun-bonnet.
From her covert in the elder-bushes Mrs. Anderson had seen the parley,
and her cheeks had also grown hot, but from a very different emotion.
She had not heard the words. She had seen the loitering girl and the
loitering plowboy, and she went back to the house vowing that she'd
"teach Jule Anderson how to spend her time talking to a Dutchman."
And yet the more she thought of it, the more she was satisfied that it

wasn't best to "make a fuss" just yet. She might hasten what she wanted
to prevent. For though Julia was obedient and mild in word, she was
none the less a little stubborn, and in a matter of this sort might take the
bit in her teeth.
And so Mrs. Anderson had recourse, as usual, to her husband. She
knew she could browbeat him. She demanded that August Wehle
should be paid off and discharged. And when Anderson had hesitated,
because he feared he could not get another so good a hand, and for
other reasons, she burst out into the declaration:
"I don't believe that you'd care a cent if she did marry a Dutchman! She
might as well as to marry some white folks I know."
CHAPTER II.
AN EXPLOSION.
It was settled that August was to be quietly discharged at the end of his
month, which was Saturday night. Neither he nor Julia must suspect
any opposition to their attachment, nor any discovery of it, indeed. This
was settled by Mrs. Anderson. She usually settled things. First, she
settled upon the course to be pursued. Then she settled her husband. He
always made a show of