Luther Hansen’s face crinkled into fine lines and his blue-gray eyes laughed amusedly.
“Got darker as I got older, Lizzie, an’ th’ typhoid put them girl-twists into th’ ends of it. Bet you’re a wishin’ for it—all th’ women folks do. Wish you had it.”
They went for a walk after supper and talked of many things. He was the same Luther, grown older and even more companionable. Elizabeth learned that both his parents had died, leaving the then seventeen-year-old boy a piece of land heavily mortgaged, and with nothing but a broken down team and a superannuated cow to raise the debt. By constant labour and self-denial the boy had lifted the financial load, and then happening to meet a man who owned this Kansas land had traded, with the hope that on the cheaper land he could reach out faster and get a good increase on the original price besides.
“I remembered th’ kind of land it was about here, an’ didn’t need t’ come an’ see it first,” he said. “I was goin’ t’ hunt you up ’fore long, anyhow. I never thought of these folks a knowin’ you, though, after I got here. Funny, ain’t it? I’m right glad t’ be back t’ you,” was his frank confession.
And Elizabeth Farnshaw looked up happily into his face, meeting his eye squarely and without embarrassment. It was as natural to have Luther, and to have him say that he wanted to see her, as it would have been to listen to the announcement from her brother.
“I’m so glad,” she replied, “and I’ve so much to tell you that I hardly know where to begin.”
Luther laughed.
“Mrs. Hornby thought I’d be put out about that room, but I told ’er nothin’ like that’d bother me if it brought you t’ th’ house. I’ve been sleepin’ under th’ wagon all th’ way down from Minnesoty an’ I can go right on doin’ it.”
They did not go far, but wandered back and sat on Nathan’s unpainted doorstep while the stars came out, and Elizabeth forgot all about the trials of the morning, and told him of her engagement to John Hunter.
“I’m going to live right next to your farm, Luther, and you must——”