The Little Immigrant | Page 4

again. She was saying, "At last when the time came to say good-bye, I clung to my mother's form and in that moment could see my soul, bared, bruised, wounded and somehow the little girl passed with that parting and although I was but a few months younger than I am to-night, I am here just one year, I feel much changed and older." Her lids closed and Jaffray did not interrupt. "Mr. Starr, do you know of any experience more cruel than this parting of parents in Europe with their children to come to America? I think of it now so often. I think there cannot be in all life . . . ."
Jaffray saw the tears in those wonderful eyes. "No, Miss Jewel, no. I know of nothing more humanly cruel! I, too, parted from my beloved mother and twin sister when a mere lad to cross the ocean to seek my fortune in America. A lad barely fifteen years of age, I had no idea of what I was going out to meet in the world when I took my small belongings and journeyed toward these shores. There were no friends, no relatives where I was going; all those were being left behind; but the spirit of adventure possessed me and I wanted more freedom to work out my destiny in and the parting had to be for me and I cannot tell you how I have suffered from homesickness for the beloved Mother and good sister, for the little home in the Rhine village where the terraces of grapes lay just back of our house; that never is forgotten, no matter how long one lives. We have a common bond of sympathy, may I hope it means a tie of friendship?"
She gave him her hand and shortly afterwards he led her back into the ballroom; but the music could not tempt them to dance again and, after seeing Renestine with friends, he said good-night and left.
It was near daylight when Jaffray smoked his last cigar and finally put out the light in his little room in the hotel and went to bed.

Jaffray paid frequent visits to Houston from McKinney, after he met Miss Jewel. Although Renestine was busy with her school work, her sister permitted her, like all the young girls, to accept the attentions of young men who wished to call or who invited her to social affairs.
Jaffray was some years older than Renestine and was aware that she was but a school girl, untutored in the ways of the world, even less than most girls of her age. But Renestine's modesty, her innocence, her beauty, appealed to him as no other woman's charms had done and thoughts of her took possession him. His stuffy little office in McKinney, in the long, narrow store where general merchandise was rather irregularly piled around in high wooden boxes, in barrels, and on shallow shelves, became a prison house and the weeks endless terms of sentence. It happened that be could not absent himself from duty oftener than once every month and then only from Friday to Sunday night. These days of freedom were now prized tenfold more dearly than if he had had his time free to do as he wished.
Heretofore it had been his dearest wish to employ his spare time with books, reading and studying to improve his mind and for the pleasure that books gave him. Now his thoughts refused to concentrate upon anything but Miss Jewel.
After some weeks of acquaintance there was an exchange of letters which grew into a long correspondence. Those were happy days for Jaffray! Eagerly he would look forward to the mail and from the receipt of each of Renestine's letters to the next he would be in a heaven all his own. He sent her songs and books of verse; he wrote long and throbbing letters, and Winter and Spring, Summer and Autumn were just one long summer day for him with the music of the birds overhead and the earth a garden of blossoms.
CHAPTER III
TWO years went by and Renestine had been the bride of Jaffray Starr three months. Grown into womanhood, she was radiant; happy in her love and secure in the faith of her choice, she went forth from her sister's home full of hope and cheer. Renestine had had many suitors, had had much admiration. She could have become the wife of a young adoring banker; she had refused to listen to the suit of men of more substance than her husband; but because of the quiet manliness of Jaffray Starr, because of his keen intellect, because of his nobility of heart and generous nature, she gave her heart into his keeping, sure that she had made no mistake, and set out with him