It was a pretty picture she made, standing in her blue gingham dress on this crimson throne, her sunbonnet fallen on her shoulders and her dark hair blowing about her face, but she knew nothing of this. She was thinking only of that wonderful machine, and she knew before she left her place how it whirled the loosened sheaves from sight, rubbed out the grain in its rough iron palms, sent the free clean wheat in a rushing stream down to the waiting measure, and flung out the broken straw to be caught on the pitchforks of the laborers behind and pressed to its place on the growing stack.
There was an exhilaration in it not to be dreamed of by her sister, who glanced at her occasionally from the kitchen windows and wondered how she could bear to be in the midst of all that heat and noise. For her part, she was quite content to let the machine stand merely as part of the picture. And perhaps for her it wore the greater dignity from her vague idea of its internal workings.
The afternoon wore away swiftly. There was a five o’clock supper to be served to the men, but this was not the elaborate affair the dinner had been, and by sunset of the long bright day the work indoors and out had been brought to a successful finish. The shining stubble of the field lay bare except for the fresh clean straw stack. The machine was rumbling on its way to another farm, and Jake Erlock’s kitchen had been restored to a state of order equal to that in which his kindly neighbors had found it.
It had been expected that Dr. Northmore would come for his daughters, but, as he had not appeared when the work was finished, they accepted the offer of a ride home with a farmer who was going their way. The sight of them sitting in the big Studebaker wagon must have acted as a prompter to Morton Elwell’s memory, for he suddenly recalled that he had an important errand in town, and proposed to go along too, a proposal to which the owner of the wagon agreed with the greatest good will. There was not a chair for him,—the girls had been established in the only two,—and the farmer and his hired man occupied the seat, but the young man settled him on a bundle of straw in the bottom of the wagon, with an air of supreme content.
They were old comrades, he and the Northmore girls; the girls could not remember the time when he had not been their escort and champion, their Fidus Achates, all the more free to devote himself to their service because he had no sisters or even girl cousins of his own. He was two years older than either of them, and his years at college seemed to make him older still, but if his absence had made any difference in the perfect freedom of their relations, he, at least, had not guessed it.
“Well, you girls must be glad to be through with this,” he said, as the team started at a rattling pace down the road. “I know you’re awfully tired.”
He included them both in his glance, but it rested longest on Esther’s face, which certainly looked a little weary under the shadow of her wide straw hat.
“You must be tired yourself, Mort,” she said, looking down at him. “You’ve been working ever since daylight, haven’t you?”
“Oh, but I’m used to that,” he said gayly, “and this is new business for you. I must say, though, I never saw things go better. There won’t be anybody round here to beat you at housekeeping if you keep on like this.”
She frowned slightly. “It was your aunt who managed everything,” she said; “all we did was to help a little.”