“I’m sorry.”
“I like to hear about them, and what you’re doing and everything, but don’t you think if you work all day at that sort of thing, it’s enough without running to meetings at night? It doesn’t leave you any time for social interests at all.
I’m sure you wouldn’t have any trouble in getting into the Country Club, and the people there are so different. Most of the members are men and women of wide social experience.”
Billy knew something of their social experience, but he didn’t tell her. Neither did he make any effort to gain admittance to the club, but he did spend more evenings attending theatres and motoring excursions than was good for his Junior Farmers’ Society. He felt that he deserved the unconscious reproof, “If you’d been at our meetings oftener,” from this young man whose aspirations were, after all, so like his own. Evidently, however, his friend’s efforts had accomplished something, while his case was as uncertain as ever.
“You’re going to marry the teacher, then?” he asked.
“Yes.” There was no doubt about that. “She isn’t afraid to go on a farm because she doesn’t know anything about it. She’d always lived in town before she came here, but she’s crazy about the country, and no gush about it either. She takes the kids to the woods and has them making gardens at the school, and all that. When I bought the farm every old wiseacre in the settlement came and said: ‘You’re making a mistake. That girl’s never done farm work and wouldn’t stand it for a year.’ I could have wrung their necks. I didn’t want to marry any girl to have
her help to support the place. I thought I could make things so she wouldn’t have to work any harder to take care of a home out here than she would in town. There was no person I could ask about it until you brought that girl out to the farm excursion. I didn’t know what she’d think, but I didn’t suppose I’d ever see her again, anyway, so I asked her if she thought a fellow had any right to take a girl who didn’t know anything about farming out to a place like mine, and if she thought a farm house could be made just as comfortable and handy as a place in town. She’s some girl that. She never smiled, and she didn’t seem surprised—she was a sight more considerate than some other people I know. She said that a girl worth having wouldn’t be afraid to take a chance on a few hardships with a man, but that the work on an average farm with no conveniences at all was too hard for any woman. Then she showed how an ordinary house could be made a regular doves’ nest for the price of an automobile.”
Billy was thinking of his own inquiry on the way to the station. It struck him with a certain grim amusement that she would be rather impressed with the prevailing sentiment. And she had said: “A girl worth having wouldn’t be afraid to take a chance on a few hardships with a man.” She hadn’t told him that.
When he came out of his reverie the boy was still talking.
“So I thought if you’d come and measure the flow of the creek,” he was saying, “I’d know what to do. If there isn’t enough water power, I’ll get a gasoline engine big enough to pump water for a bathroom and do the power work around the house, anyway.”