The Happy End | Page 2

her; but with their home all built,

his impatience to be with her was greater than his sense of propriety,
and he put his horse at a sharp canter to the left.
Calvin continued down the valley until the road turned toward the
range and an opening which he followed into a steeper and narrower
rift beyond. Here there were no clearings in the rocky underbrush until
he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at
the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without
decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, by the
triangular sheep washing and shearing pen, to the stabling shed.
Hannah's mother was bending fretfully over the kitchen stove, and
Richmond, her father, was drawing off sodden leather boots. He was a
man tall and bowed, stiff but still powerful, with a face masked in an
unkempt tangle of beard.
"H'y, Calvin," he cried; "you're just here for spoon licking! Lucy was
looking for company." Mrs. Braley's comment was below her breath,
but it was plainly no corroboration of her husband's assurance. "You'll
find Hannah in the front of the house," Richmond added. Hannah was
sitting on the stone steps at the side entrance to the parlor. As usual she
had a bright bow in the hair streaming over her back, and her feet were
graceful in slippers with thin black stockings. She kissed him willingly
and studied him with wide-opened hazel-brown eyes. There wasn't
another girl in Greenstream, in Virginia, with Hannah's fetching
appearance, he decided with a glow of adoration. She had a--a sort of
beauty entirely her own; it was not exactly prettiness, but a quality far
more disturbing, something a man could never forget.
"She's done," he told her abruptly.
"What?" Hannah gazed up at him with a dim sweetness in the gathering
dusk.
"What!" he mocked her. "You ought to be ashamed to ask. Why, the
house --our home. We could move in by a week if we were called to.
We can get married any time."

She now looked away from him, her face still and dreaming.
"You don't seem overly anxious," Calvin declared.
"It's just the idea," she replied. "I never thought of it like this
before--right on a person." She sighed. "Of course it will be nice,
Calvin."
He sat below her with an arm across her slim knees. "I'm going to dig
right into the truck patch; there's a parcel of poles cut for the beans. It
won't be much the first year; but wait and we'll show people how to
live." He repeated his vision in connection with the present Alderwith
holdings.
"I wonder will we ever be rich like the senator?"
"Certainly," he answered with calm conviction. "A man couldn't be
shiftless with you to do for, Hannah. He'd be obliged to have
everything the best."
"It'll take a long while though," she continued.
"We will have to put in some hard licks," he admitted. "But we are
young; we've got a life to do it in."
"A man has, but I don't know about girls. It seems like they get old
faster; and then things--silk dresses don't do them any good. How
would ma look in fashionable clothes!"
"You won't have to wait that long," he assured her. "Your father has
never hurt himself about the place, there's no money in sheep; and as
for Hosmer--you know well as me that he is nothing outside of the
bank and his own comfort. Store clothes is Hosmer all through."
"I wish you were a little like him there," Hannah returned.
He admitted that this evening he was more untidy than need be. "I just
couldn't wait to see you," he declared; "with our place and--and all so
safe and happy."

II
The Braley table, spread after the Greenstream custom in the kitchen,
was surrounded by Richmond and Calvin--Hosmer had stayed late at
the bank--Hannah and Susan, the eldest of the children, prematurely
aged and wasted by a perpetual cough, while Lucy Braley moved
carelessly between the stove and the table. At rare intervals she was
assisted by Hannah, who bore the heavy dishes in a silent but
perceptible air of protest.
Calvin Stammark liked this; it was a part of her superiority to the other
girls of the locality. He made up his mind that she should never lose her
present gentility. Whenever he could afford it Hannah must have help
in the house. No greater elegance was imaginable. Senator Alderwith,
at his dwelling with its broad porch, had two servants--two servants and
a bathtub with hot water running right out of a tap. And he Calvin
Stammark, would have the same, before Hannah and he were too old to
enjoy it.
He had eleven hundred dollars now, after buying the