CHAPTER VII
EM'LY DUNHAM
"Her name's Em'ly Dunham," announced Miner shortly.
Ambrose, who at this moment was arranging a pyramid design of their new stock of calicoes on a counter in the front of their shop in order to get the best colour effect, looked up quickly and then put his hand over his lips.
"Whose named Em'ly Dunham?" he inquired in a partially stifled voice, with his interest apparently still concentrated on his work.
"You know, the Yankee school teacher," Miner growled. He was standing inside a kind of wire cage which separated the post-office department from the rest of the store of Hobbs & Thompson, the charge of the mail having recently been given to the two men.
"How'd you find out?"
"Letters!" The little man was assorting the mail with an energy that Pennyroyal's one dozen epistles or less a day hardly justified. This was one morning less than a week after the unsuccessful midnight excursion.
Ambrose now crossed his feet, resting his weight on his elbows against the bales of cotton cloth. He was staring solemnly at his partner. "Em'ly Dunham is a pretty name, Miner; kind of soft and gentle, yet with plenty of spirit in it. I am reckoning some one in Pennyroyal ought to try and make things up to her."
With a sigh the other man climbed up to perch on his high official stool. "Ain't you never goin' to stop thinkin' of females and marryin', Ambrose? I thought mebbe when you lost Sarah you was cured!"
Ambrose leaned farther over, shaking his head. "No," he answered simply, "I reckon not. I wonder ef you have ever thought, Miner, of how much them two little words—livin' and lovin'—are alike. I don't think it was an accident, jest the difference of that one little letter. Not that I intend marryin' again—I am through with marryin' forever—it's you, Miner Hobbs, I'm worryin' over." Here, because of his earnestness, Ambrose left his place and coming across the aisle looked down over the wire netting upon his friend. "Miner," he repeated as sternly as he was able, "your time has come. There ain't nothin' so no 'count on earth as an old bachelor. It's worse than an old maid and different, because perhaps an old maid couldn't help gettin' left out, but the Lord's given every man a chance to improve his condition jest by askin'. Course he may have to ask more'n one and mebbe more'n once, but there ain't no age limit to stop him. Then think, Miner, what chances always lies in villages. Why, villages is nature's nunneries. Ain't it time fer you to do a man's part?"
There was silence for a little time, Miner making no response, although from over in his corner Moses growled in his sleep.
Then the tall man coughed apologetically. He looked tired, as though he had been awake many hours the night before. "I didn't mean to rile you any," he continued, "only I can't help thinkin' that a man without a wife is like a little boat a-floatin' on the sea of life without a rudder and bound for nowhere in particular. Ef you don't marry you'll be awful sorry when you're an old man, Miner, and ef you've been kind of overfed on Pennyrile girls, why, this here new school teacher——"
Miner fairly bounced up and down on his stool in his impatience. "Lord, why shouldn't I be sorry when I'm old instead of when I'm young? Mebbe I won't live to get old and then I'd 'a' made myself wretcheder'n a slave and all fer nothin'."
At this second, the door opening, the speaker collapsed, while Ambrose shot backward behind the counter toward the rear of the shop. A flood of June sunshine entered with the girl, and Ambrose heard her name for the second time as she asked the terrified Miner for her mail. He also saw her plainly. She was twenty-five or perhaps a little more, with hair that was brown or gold as the light shone upon it; gray eyes set wide apart—eyes that might at times be cold and then shine warmly like a cloud suddenly shot through by the sun; her mouth was larger and her chin firmer than beauty requires, and yet both showed curves of frequent and redeeming laughter. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a slender body, and there was about her a hint of delicate and unconscious coquetry, noticeable as she talked with Miner while making her purchases, the little man coming out from his retreat to serve her and afterward following her into the street, where he was gone for almost an hour.
In the meantime it was difficult for Ambrose to attend properly to business, for never before had his partner left the store during working hours save for his meals and to attend the wedding of his sisters, two of whom had happily passed from his home to homes of their own. However, no words on the subject were exchanged when Miner curtly explained that Miss Dunham had too many bundles for a lady to carry.
It was after this extraordinary occurrence at their shop that Miner left Ambrose and Moses alone for three evenings in succession, the tall man sitting in his chair in the backyard under a ripening apple tree, with Moses at his side and his friend's empty chair near by. But although Ambrose drooped every now and then, he always smiled resolutely afterward. "It'll plumb be the salvation of Miner."
On the fourth night, however, Ambrose, having gone early to bed and fallen into a light sleep, was awakened by a knock at his kitchen door, and on coming downstairs again found his friend outside. "It ain't no hour to be in bed yet," Miner snapped. Knowing the little man had something unusual on his mind his friend led him to their accustomed refuge.
Ambrose and Miner were curiously incongruous figures that night in the garden, for the one man wore an oriental silk dressing-gown over a pair of hastily put on blue jean trousers; the gown, a scheme of deep rich colours and designs, having drifted into the shop one day by accident, had been seized upon by Ambrose to gratify a subconscious craving. It was tied about his waist with a red cord, and as he lolled back in his chair his eyes would travel from their study of his companion's face up toward the stars which he could see shining through the spaces between the leaves of his apple tree.
Miner kept his eyes always upon the ground; he had a chew of tobacco in his mouth, his lips worked spasmodically, but he did not speak, neither did be spit as a vent to his feelings, a tight, small man, buttoned up both inside and out! By and by, however, when nearly an hour had passed in silence, he rose to his feet.
"Reckon I'd better be goin', Ambrose; it's gettin' late. Good night."
But the tall man pushed him back again into his chair. "Lord, Miner, is it so hard for you to tell things, even to me?" he inquired. "Out with it!"
"Don't you go and be puttin' foolish ideas on to me if I tell you," Miner pleaded, "but it's just this: The women have made up their minds to put Miss Em'ly Dunham out of Pennyrile. Course we men tried and failed, so we give up, but when a woman starts out to do a thing, why she does it. Can't you think of no plan to make 'em stop, Ambrose, bein's as you've always had a kind of way with women?"
Ambrose shook his head, his homely face lined with sympathy. Poor Miner was unconscious of his own change of attitude toward the interloper, but surely he must not be turned back from the land of romance within whose gracious habitations Ambrose himself could never again hope to dwell.
"I don't see just what I kin do with the women," he was obliged to confess after a moment of hard thinking, "still ef we keep studyin' and studyin' no doubt we kin find a way."