But though Sadie Crane was undersized and spoke scornfully, she was old enough to feel a woman’s desires and dream a woman’s dreams. She watched the pair drive away together in pleasant converse on the quilt-lined spring seat of the farm wagon, and swallowed a sob.
“Lizzie always had th’ best of everything,” she reflected.
The roads were slippery and gave an excuse for driving slowly, and the young man exerted himself to be agreeable. The distaste for the presence of the Cranes at her home when he came for her, his possible opinion of her family and friends, the prolonged struggle with her father, even the headache from which she had not been free for days, melted out of Elizabeth’s mind in the joy of that ride, and left it a perfect experience. It began to rain before they were halfway to their destination, and they sat shoulder to shoulder under the umbrella, with one of the quilts drawn around both. There was a sack of butterscotch, and they talked of Scott, and Dickens, and the other books Elizabeth Farnshaw had absorbed from Aunt Susan’s old-fashioned library; and Elizabeth was surprised to find that she had read almost as much as this college man, and still more surprised to find that she remembered a great deal more of what she had read than he seemed to do. She asked many questions about his college experiences and learned that he had lacked but a year and a half of graduation.
“Why didn’t you finish?” she asked curiously.
“Well, you know, father died, and I didn’t have hardly enough to finish on, so I thought I’d come out here and get to making something. I didn’t care to finish. I’d had my fun out of it. I wish I hadn’t gone at all. If I’d gone into the office with my father and been admitted to the Bar it would have been better for me. I wouldn’t have been on the farm then,” he said regretfully.
“Then why didn’t you go into the law? You could have made it by yourself,” Elizabeth said, understanding that it hurt John Hunter’s pride to farm.
The young man shrugged his dripping shoulders and pulled the quilt tighter around them as he answered indifferently:
“Not very well. Father left very little unmortgaged except mother’s own property, and I thought I’d get out of Canton. It ain’t easy to live around folks you know unless you have money.”
“But you could have worked your way through college; lots of boys do it,” the girl objected.
“Not on your life!” John Hunter exclaimed emphatically. “I don’t go to college that way.” After a few moments’ musing he added slowly, “I’ll make money enough to get out of here after a while.”