The Soldier of the Valley | Page 9

is with us we grow a bit like the animals about us. We sit together and smoke; we purr, as it were, and know each other's mind. Tim and I purred. Incident by incident, year by year, we travelled down the course of our lives again, over the rough ways, over the smooth ways, smoking and smoking, until at last we brought up together at the present. Not a word had either of us spoken, but at last when our reminiscent wanderings were over and we paused on the threshold of the future, Tim spoke.
"Attractive?" he said in a tone of inquiry.
He was looking at me with eyebrows arched, curiously, and there was a faint suggestion of hostility in the set of his mouth.
Poor Tim! He has seen so little of women! We have them in our valley, of course. But he and I lived much in the great book-land beyond the hills. We had read together of all the heroines of the romances, and we knew their little ways and their pretty speeches as well as if we had ourselves walked with them through a few hundred pages and lived happily ever after. They had been the women of our world as distinct from the women of our valley. The last we knew as kindly, honest persons with a faculty for twisting their English and a woful ignorance of well-turned speeches. They never said "Fair Sir" nor "Master." But I had gone from that book-world and had seen the women of the real world. Here I had the advantage of my brother. Into his life a single woman had come from the real world. She was different from the women of our valley. I had known that the moment our eyes met, and by the way Tim smoked now, and by the tone of his terse inquiry, I knew that he had met a woman who had said "Fair Sir" to him, and I feared for him. It was disturbing. I felt a twinge of jealousy, but whether for the tall, strong young fellow before me, to whom I had been all, or for the fair-faced girl, I could not for the life of me tell. It seemed to be a bit of both.
"I remarked that she was attractive," said Tim aggressively, for I had kept on smoking in silence.
"Rather," I answered carelessly. "But who is she--a stranger here?"
"Rather," repeated Tim hotly. "Well, you are blind. I suppose you judged her by that ugly gray gown. You thought she was some pious Dunkard."
"I am no enemy of piety," I retorted. "In fact, I hardly noticed her clothes at all, except to think that their simplicity gave her a sort of Priscilla air that was fetching."
Tim softened. "That's it exactly," he said. "But, Mark, you should have seen Mary Warden when she came here."
"From where?" I asked.
"From Kansas. She lived in some big town out West, and when her mother died there was no one left to her but Luther Warden, her uncle. He sent for her, and now she is living with him. The old man sets a great store by her."
Luther Warden is rich. He has accumulated a fine lot of property above Six Stars--several good farms, a mill and a tannery; but even the chance of inheriting all these did not seem fair compensation for being his niece and having to live with him. He was good to a fault. He exuded piety. Six days of the week he worked, piling up the passing treasures of this world. One whole day he preached, striving for the treasures in that to come. You could not lay a finger on a weak spot in his moral armor, but Tip Pulsifer protected from the assaults of Satan only by a shield of human skin, always seemed to me the better of the two. Tip wore leaky boots all last winter, but when spring came he bought Mrs. Pulsifer a sewing machine. Have you ever worn leaky boots when the snow was banked fence high? Luther Warden's boots never leak. They are always tight and well tallowed. His horses and his cows waddle in their fat, and the wool of his flocks is the longest in the valley. Luther gets up with the sun and goes to bed with it. Some in our valley think his heavy crops come from his six days of labor, and some from his one day of preaching. He says that the one day does it all; but he keeps on getting out with the sun on the other six. I knew that the poor girl from Kansas must get up with the sun, too, for her uncle was not the man to brook any dawdling. I knew, further, that Sunday could not be a day