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and barks in welcome.
Lucy almost fell out of the saddle. Edd was there beside her, quick to lend a
hand.
"Wal, I reckon it was a night for both of us," he said. "But shore I don't
want another like it, unless what I pretended was really true."
Murmuring something in reply, Lucy limped to her room, and barring the door
she struggled to remove her boots. They might as well have been full of
thorns, considering the pangs they gave her.
"Oh--oh--what a--terrible night!" she gasped, falling on the bed, fully
dressed. "Yet--I know I wouldn't have missed it--for worlds...Oh, I'm dead!
I'll never wake up!"
Chapter VII
It was midsummer. The mornings were pleasant, the days hot and still, the
evenings sultry and purple, with massed clouds in the west.
The July rains had left the ridges and open patches and the edges of the
clearings colourful and fragrant with flowers. Corn and cane and beans were
green and wavy in the fields. A steady line of bees flew by the cabin porch,
to and fro from hives to woods. And a drowsy murmuring hum made music down
by-the shady stream.
At sunrise the home of the Denmeades seemed to be a rendezvous for the frisky
chipmunk and chattering red squirrel, for squalling blue jay and whistling
hawk and cawing crow, and for the few wild singing birds of the locality. At
noon the woods were locked in hot, drowsy stillness; the pine needles did not
quiver; heat veils rose smokily from the glades. At evening a melancholy
pervaded the wilderness.
One Saturday Lucy sat meditating in the tent that had long been her abode. It
was situated out under the pines on the edge of the gully. The boys had built
a platform of rough-hewn boards, and a framework of poles, over which the
canvas had been stretched. The floor was high above the ground, so that Lucy
had long lost the fear of snakes and tarantulas. Indeed this outdoor home had
grown wonderfully dear to her. By day she heard the tiny patter of pine
needles on the tent; at night the cool winds blew through, and in the
moonlight shadows of swaying branches moved above her.
Lucy had problems on her mind. As far as the Denmeades were concerned, her
welfare work had been successful beyond her dreams. The time was approaching
when in all fairness she must go to another family. She would keenly regret
leaving this place she had learned to love, yet she wanted to do as well by
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others as she had done by the Denmeades. When to go--that was part of the
problem.
Another disturbing factor came in the shape of a letter from her sister Clara.
It had shocked her and induced a regurgitation of almost forgotten emotions.
The letter lay open in her lap. It must be reread and considered and decided
upon--matters Lucy was deferring.
The last and perhaps most perplexing question concerned Edd Denmeade. Lucy had
to go back in retrospect. The trouble between Edd and her dated back to the
dance in May, the one which he had forced her to attend. Lucy had gone to
other dances since then, but Edd had never attended another. She might in time
have forgiven him for that exhibition of his primitiveness, but shortly
afterward he had precipitated something which resulted in their utter
estrangement. The bee hunter was the only one of the Denmeades who had not
wondrously benefited by her work. He had lost by her presence. He had gone
back farther. He exhibited signs of becoming a solitary wanderer in the woods
most of the time, a violent and dangerous young man when he did mingle with
people. Lucy had forced upon her the undoubted fact that she was the cause of
this. No one else knew yet, not even Edd's mother. Lucy could not take
unadulterated pride and joy in her success. She did not see how she could have
avoided such a situation, yet regret haunted her. And now with decisions to
make she vacillated over the important ones, and brought to mind the scene
that had turned Edd Denmeade aside from the happier influences and tasks which
she had imposed upon his family.
Shortly after that dance Edd had come up to her where she sat on the corral
fence watching the boys roping and shoeing a horse.
"I reckon I'm goin' to ask you a question," he announced. Almost his tone was
the cool drawling one habitual with him; here, however, there seemed something
deep, inevitable behind his words.
"Goodness! Don't ask me to go to another dance," laughed Lucy.
"Reckon I'll never dance again, unless--" He broke off. "An' what I'm goin' to
ask you I've asked other girls. Shore this is the last time."
"Well, what is it?" queried Lucy, suddenly perturbed. "Will you marry me?"
Notwithstanding the fact that she was startled, Lucy burst into mirth. It must
have been the opposite to what she felt, a nervousness expressing itself in
laughter. But it appeared to be unfortunate.
"I--I beg pardon, Edd," she made haste to say. "Really! didn't mean to laugh
at you. But you--you surprised me so...You can't be serious."
"Reckon I don't know just what I am," he replied grimly. "But I'm askin' you
to marry me."
"Because you want a home and a woman? I heard your father say that."
"Shore. That's the way I've felt. Reckon this is more. I've told my folks an'
relations I was askin' you. Wanted them to know."
"Edd, I cannot marry you," she replied gravely.
"Why not?" he demanded. "You're here. You want to work for us. An' I reckon I
could help you as much as you could me."
"That's true. You could help me a great deal. But I'm sorry I can't marry
you."
"Reckon you're too good for a backwoodsman, a wild-bee hunter who's been
jilted by other girls," he asserted, with a strange, deep utterance.
"No. You're wrong," declared Lucy, both touched and angered by his speech. "I
don't think I'm too good. That dance you dragged me to cured me of my vanity."
"Wal, then, what's the reason?" he went on. "Ma says you're goin' to stay
among us people for years. If that's so you'll have to marry one of us. I'm
askin' you first."
"Edd, an honest girl could not marry a man she didn't love," replied Lucy.
"Nor can a man be honest asking a girl whom he does not love."
"Shore I am honest. I'm no liar," he retorted. "I'm just plain man. I don't
know much of people or books. But I know the woods, an' reckon I can learn
what you want me to."
"I don't mean honest in that sense," rejoined Lucy. "I mean you don't love
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me."
"Love you! Are you like Sadie, who told around that I'd never kissed her?"
"No, I'm not like Sadie," answered Lucy with rising temper.
"Wal, I'm askin' your pardon," he said. "Shore you're different from
Sadie...As for this love you girls talk about I don't know--I always felt a
man should keep his hands an' his lips to himself until he had a wife."
"Edd, I respect you for that," replied Lucy earnestly. "And understand you
better...But love is not kisses and all that."
"Wal, what is it, then?"
"It is something beautiful, spiritual as well as physical. It is a longing for
the welfare, the happiness, the good of someone as well as the sweetness of
desire. For a woman love means what Ruth said in the Bible, 'Whither thou
goest, I will go. Thy people shall be my people, thy God my God.'...A man who
loves a woman will do anything for her--sacrifice himself. The greater his
sacrifice the greater his love. And last he ought to feel that he could not
live without the object of his affections."
"Wal, I reckon I don't love you," replied Edd ponderingly.
"Of course you don't. You're only thinking of yourself," rejoined Lucy.
"Reckon I can't help what I think. Who put all this in my head?"
"Edd, you haven't got anything in your head," retorted Lucy, unable to
restrain her pique and scorn. "That's the trouble. You need education. All
your people need education more than anything else."
"Wal, why don't you teach me same as you do Liz and Lize?" he complained.
"You're a grown man!" ejaculated Lucy. "You want to molly me! And you talk
like a child."
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