Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

This was too much for Miss Gerould. She of the pampered and sheltered life. "Oh, my goodness," the girl gasped. The face under the pretty hat paled. Minga, who had never before come up against the raw things of life, grew suddenly faint. The face of his friend peered up into Dunstan's. "Say, would you call that a curse?" inquired Minga. "It—it sounded awful, Dunce; I believe it was a curse. It sort of scares me."

The boy laughed. He changed gears. "These people are awful queer," he admitted; "they do know things; they're good to keep away from, I think."

Minga shivered. "But could she make up such wild things? 'a dead body between ye, joining ye,' how do they know? They can't know, can they?"

Dunstan shook his head solemnly and the two young heads for a time cast nervous glances behind them, for it was a strange happening for a summer day; it would seem to cast a curious shadow on their adventure. The boy driver of the "Green Bottle" was thoughtful for a long time before he said ruminatingly, slowly, to his companion, "Just the same, they do know things. Minga, if we slept outdoors always and found our roads by the stars and noticed the way bushes grew, and tides, and the moon, and stayed with just animals and just took life as it is, you know, without the elevators and cosmetics and electric lights and hotels and the things that keep us away from life, just took it straight like a big drink of something powerful, why, wouldn't we be like that? Wouldn't we look directly at big things and see them straight, not wrapped up in tissue paper?"

Dunstan swept his free hand to the fields flowing by them. "Colter, well, Colter told me an awful lot of funny things about life and the great laws under it. Just being good, for instance, you have no idea, Minga, the great natural laws that lie under just being good." Dunstan paused. "There were a lot of old guys, priests and mystics and things that knew these laws, but we get lost from them, getting rich and all. The old kind of science got ahead of them and didn't believe them, but science, nowadays, Colter says——"

Dunstan after a few moments' reflection looked around at his companion. "Did you hear the old tent-toad call us 'Mates'?" he asked soberly, "just 'Mates'—I think she saw something."

Minga was silent.

"Maybe we are mates," said the boy soberly; "maybe we are, Minga."

The girl at his side bit her lip and her foot tapped impatiently on the floor. "Now," said Minga, "now I am not going to be bothered with that stuff." Then, the vivid color flying into her face, "Dunce, oh, I will not have it; such nonsense, from a wrinkled old gypsy." Minga was silent a moment before she added, "I should think you'd want to forget what she said, 'a dead body between us, uniting us,' all that."