"The dear," murmured her aunt, "and some folks think her willful. I have always noticed that her self will ran in the right direction. She didn't care to leave home for school, of course, but now she loves college life. Well, I do wonder if there is anything more beautiful in life than a glorious young girl."
Was Aunt Mary a little regretful? She had been a young girl once. She had been glorious too. Jane had inherited her own swirl of bronze hair from this self-same Aunt Mary, while the mother, a woman of rare beauty had given the daughter those metallic gray eyes. Their glints could be as soft as silver, or as flashy as steel, so, beautiful eyes, that were velvet in meekness were really metallic in their moody changes. Presently a gale of laughter announced Jane's return.
"Auntie," called the girl who was thus being eulogized, "I am bringing you a guest. Here is Uncle Todd, got caught in the storm, purposes to give you a jolly chat. Come on, Uncle. Aunt Mary wants to hear all about the auction over Lincoln way. They even sold the big tree, Aunt Mary."
On the arm of the young girl there came trudging along the tanbark path Uncle Todd; old, gray, tottering, his cane so much a part of himself as to seem a third member, his uncertain smile ever making its way to Jane's happy face, while she urged and assisted him to the porch. Plainly he loved Jane, and he enjoyed the prospect of a chat with Aunt Mary, for Uncle Todd was a ranch character, serving, by contrast, to picture more clearly the types so varied and so completely different from that which he presented. Uncle Todd was a conservative in a group of rebels. He kept with him the mannerisms of old New York State and was a Yankee of the strongest and deepest dye. Even the twang of voice, and tworl of words, had not been rounded out into the drawl of the hills around El Capitan.
"Good afternoon, or is it still mornin'?" wheezed the old man. "Glad I met Janie or that there shower might have blown me clean into the hereafter. Sich a blow," and he adjusted the confidential cane. "Jest like the one that came one afternoon last summer, when that there city fellar tried to sell me the trick umbrel." He clambered the low steps unsteadily. "And I mind, Janie girl, you happened along that day too. Seems like as if you know just when to happen," chuckling, he put his arm more firmly into that of the girl who urged him along.
"Now, Uncle Todd, you know very well you were perfectly all right when I found you just now. I do believe you were going to sit plumb down and defy the storm. Just to see what it would do at its worst. But you are a little wet," feeling the green coat that covered the bent shoulders. "I wonder, Aunt Mary, if we can't fit Uncle Todd out in some of daddy's regimentals."
"No need, no need," he objected. "This here co't don't leak a mite. Finest yarn--no more of this kind. I fetched it clear from Syracuse," he announced almost reverently.
"But you had better come inside," warned Aunt Mary, "the rain gets in here when the wind turns."
"Just as you say, Miss Allen. Fact is, I never say no to a sit in the parlor. I say to the boys, boys I say; if you want a real good comfortable chin, in a chair that's big enough for you, make it over at Henry Allen's place."
Graciously acknowledging the compliment, Aunt Mary and Jane led the old man into the living room he was wont to call the parlor.