The Girl From Kellers | Page 9

be led into foolishness by vanity. Sadie knew her value. It had for some time been obvious that a number of the young farmers who dealt at the store and frequented the hotel did so for her sake, and she was willing to extend her father's trade. In fact, she helped to manage both businesses as cleverly as she managed the customers. Her charm was largely physical, but she used it with caution. One might indulge in banter, and Sadie had a ringing laugh that young men liked, but there were limits that few who knew her overstepped. One or two had done so, but had been rebuked in a way they wished to forget. Sadie had the tricks of an accomplished coquette, but something of the heart of a prude.
The settlement got indistinct, and crossing a low rise, they drove past a birch bluff where the twigs were breaking into tiny points of green. Then they forded a creek and skirted a shallow lake, from which a flock of ducks rose and flew North in a straggling wedge. Sandhills gleamed on the ridges, tall cranes stalked about the hollows, and when the team, laboring through the loose soil, crossed an elevation one could see the plain roll back into the far distance. It was sharp-cut to the horizon; only the varying color that changed from soft blue to white and yellow in the foreground helped the eye to gage its vast extent. The snow had bleached the grass, which glittered like silver in the strong sunlight.
A boisterous wind from the North-west drove white-edged clouds across the sky, but the air was soft with a genial warmth that drew earthy smells from the drying sod. In places, an emerald flush had begun to spread across the withered grass and small flowers like crocuses were pushing through. The freshness and hint of returning life reacted on Charnock, and stirred his blood when he glanced at his companion. He felt her physical allurement as he had not felt it before, but now and then he resolutely looked away. Sadie had shown him marked favor, but there was much he might lose.
She would not have charmed him when he first came to the prairie with romantic hopes and vague ambitions. He had been fastidious then, and the image of a very different girl occupied his heart. Even now he knew the other stood for all that was best in life; for tender romances, and sweetness, and high purpose. Helen had gracious qualities he had once half-reverently admired. She loved pictures and books and music, and was marked by a calm serenity that was very different from Sadie's restless force. But it looked as if he had lost her, and Sadie, who could break a horse and manage a hotel, was nearer his level. Yet he hesitated; he must choose one of two paths, and when he had chosen could not turn back.
"You don't talk much," Sadie remarked at length. "Guess you must be thinking about your mortgage."
"I was, in a way. It was rather useless and very rude. However, I won't think of it again until somebody makes me."
"That's a way of yours. You think too late."
"I'm afraid I sometimes do so," Charnock admitted. "Anyhow, to-day, I'm not going to think at all."
Sadie noted the reckless humor with which he began to talk, but she led him on, and they engaged in cheerful banter until Long Lake began to gleam among the woods ahead. Charnock skirted the trees and pulled up where a number of picketed teams and rigs stood near the water's edge. Farther along, a merry party was gathering wood to build a fire, and Charnock did not find Sadie alone again for some hours after he helped her down.
In summer, Long Lake has no great beauty and shrinks, leaving a white saline crust on its wide margin of sun-baked mud, but it is a picturesque stretch of water when the snow melts in spring and the reflections of the birches quiver on the smooth belt along its windward edge. Farther out, the shadows of flying clouds chase each other across the flashing surface. Two or three leaky canoes generally lie among the trees, and in the afternoon Charnock dragged one down, and helping Sadie on board, paddled up the lake.
As they crept round a point flocks of ducks left the water and the air throbbed with a beat of wings that gradually died away. The fire, round which the others sat, was out of sight, and the rustle of the tossing birches emphasized the quietness. Charnock let the canoe drift, and Sadie looked up at him from her low seat among the wagon robes he had brought.
"What are you going to do about your farm?" she asked.
"I don't know yet,