Winning the Wilderness Part 38

Jo was no better pleased that Leigh's face was like a fair picture under her white hat, and she felt her own cheeks flushing as she saw how cool and poised and unhurried her little neighbor appeared.

"Thank you, Thaine. All right. Don't forget, then," Jo heard her say as she gathered up the reins, and noted that it was her motion and not the young man's that cut short the interview.

"Leigh is a leech when she has the chance," Jo said jokingly, as the two sat in the Aydelot buggy at last.

When one has grown up from babyhood the ruling spirit in a neighborhood, her opinions are to be accepted.

Thaine gave Jo a quick look but said nothing.

"By the way, papa says Jim isn't very well this summer. Says he still grieves over the farm he lost. Leigh hasn't much ahead of her, nailed down to a chicken lot and a cow pasture and a garden. I wonder they don't move to town. She'd get a clerkship, maybe."

Thaine only waited, and Jo ran on.

"I'd never stay in the country a minute if I could get to town. I'll be glad when papa's elected treasurer, so we can live in Careyville again.

Poor Leigh. Doesn't she look like a drudge?"

Still Thaine was silent.

"Why don't you say something?" Jo demanded, looking coquettishly at him.

"About what?" he asked gravely.

"About Leigh. I don't want to do all the gossiping. Tell me what you think of her."

"It would take a Cyclopedia Britannica set of volumes to do that," Thaine replied.

"Oh, be serious and answer my questions," Jo demanded.

"'Doesn't she look like a drudge?' What kind of an answer--information or just my opinion?"

"Oh, your opinion, of course," Jo said.

"If she looks like a drudge, it's what she is." The young man's eyes were on his team.

"I thought you liked her," Jo insisted.

"I do," Thaine replied.

"How much, pray?"

"I haven't measured yet."

Thaine Aydelot was by inheritance a handsome young fellow, and as he turned now to his companion, something in his countenance gave it a manliness not usual to his happy-go-lucky expression. But the same unpenetrable something beyond which no one could see was always on his face when Jo talked of Leigh.

"How much do you like me?" The query was daringly put, but the beauty of the girl's striking face seemed to warrant anything from her lips, however daring.

"A tremendous lot, I know that," Thaine replied quickly, and Jo dropped her eyes and began to chatter of other things.

In the afternoon the cool grove was inviting, and Thaine and Jo loitered about in careless enjoyment of woodland shadows and wind-dimpled waters and Sabbath quiet and one another.

"I want father to have a little boathouse over by the lily corner and make a picnic place here sometime," Thaine said as they sat by the lake in the late afternoon.

"Such a nice place for you to come in the summer. Aren't you glad you don't just have to stay in the country?" Jo asked.

"Would you never be satisfied in the country, Jo?" Thaine queried. "Not if you had a home there?"

Jo blushed and her face was exquisite in its rich coloring.

"Would you be?" she asked.

"Oh, I'd like to do something worth while," Thaine replied. "Father doesn't say much, but he wants me here, I know."

"He will get over it, I'm sure," Jo insisted. "Why should the first generation here weight us all down here, too? I hope you'll not give up to your father. I wouldn't," Jo said defiantly.

"Did you ever give up to him?" Thaine asked.

"No, he gives up to me." The words were too sweetly said to seem harsh.

"I don't blame him," Thaine added.

"I don't believe any of our crowd will stay here like the old folks have done, except Todd Stewart and, of course, Leigh," Jo declared.

"Say, Jo, my folks don't look old to me. Mummie is younger and good-lookinger than anybody, except--"

"Leigh Shirley," Jo broke in.

Thaine looked at his watch without replying.

"Is it late? You must take me home, now," Jo said. "You'll be over tonight, won't you? We will have some company from Careyville who want to meet you."

"I'm sorry, but I promised Leigh up here at church that I'd go over to Cloverdale for a little while tonight."

Thaine could not tell Jo of Leigh's affairs, and he felt that the Shirleys' intimacy with his father's family and his own expressed admiration and attention to Jo were sufficient to protect him from jealousy. Jo stiffened visibly.

"Thaine Aydelot, what's the reason for your actions--Oh, I don't care. Go to Shirley's, by all means. Everybody to his likes," she cried angrily.

"Well, that's my rathers for tonight, and I can't help it," Thaine answered hotly.

"Of course you can't. Let's go home quick so you can get off early," Jo said in an angered tone.

"I'll go as slowly as I can. You can't get rid of me so." Thaine was getting control of himself again.

"Say, Thaine, tell me why you go away from our company tonight," Jo pleaded softly, putting her hand on her companion's arm. "Don't you care to come to our house any more?"

They were in the buggy now on the driveway across the lake. Thaine recalled the moonlight hour when he sat with Leigh, of how little Leigh seemed to be thinking of herself, of how he had admired her because she demanded no admiration from him. Was there an obligation demanded here today? And had he given grounds for such obligation? Past question, he had.

"Jo, you must take me just as I am," he said. "All the boys are ready to crowd into any place I vacate around Cyrus Bennington's premises. You won't miss one from your company tonight. I may get desperate--and kill off a few of them sometime to make you really miss me."