WE FIND OURSELVES OWN FOLKS AT LAST

Too Long; Didn't Read

“I’ve kep’ Hiram waitin’ consid’able of a spell,” continued Loveday, in a firmer voice. “I wa’n’t but seventeen when he first come a-courtin’ me, and now I’m risin’ forty. I wa’n’t never one that felt a partickler call to matrimony, nor that thought they had any great tarlent for it. And the Lord ’peared to have filled my hands consid’able full where he’d sot me.” “Dear Loveday! I should think He had!” murmured Octavia. My heart was too full for words. I seemed to realize, for the first time, what Loveday had been to us. Groundnut Hill Farm without her was a thing which my imagination failed to grasp. I stared at her in blank dismay. “It wouldn’t ’pear to be a time to think of marryin’ or givin’ in marriage, when there’s family troubles,” continued Loveday; “not without there was partickler reasons, as you might say. But—but Hiram he kind of needs now to be took care of——” “And you have been taking care of us instead all these years!” I said, self-reproachfully, for we had always regarded this romance of Loveday’s as only a matter to smile at. “’Tain’t that so much,” amended Loveday, conscientiously. “I can’t say as I was ever one that felt a real call to take care of a man person—but—but it seems to come handy that we should get married right now. Hiram’s a professor and a God-fearin’ man if ever there was one, and yet I can’t feel to trust him to go everywheres alone—men folks bein’ so easy carried away.” This was puzzling; for had not Hiram, from his youth up, gone on his traveling tours alone? “Besides, he hain’t got quite so much spunk to carry things through as what I have, if I do say it,” Loveday continued, thoughtfully. Was Loveday becoming mercenary and longing that Hiram’s business should have the aid of her superior “spunk”? I felt a cold chill in the shadow of suspicion, of which I was ashamed the next moment, that Loveday was fleeing from our falling fortunes.