"Better give that to me. See, I've picked up three or four along the road and got half-a-dozen commissions—hope I shan't forget 'em."
"Are you general errand-boy?" she demanded impatiently.
"You wouldn't want me to be unneighborly? Besides," he added with a twinkle in his eye, "I thought you found fault with me for not being useful!"
"Oh, no, not in that way. Don't you suppose I see that you are useful here, that everybody likes you and depends upon you—but it is such a waste of yourself to be busied with such little things—there are larger places to be filled elsewhere——"
"And larger men to fill them," he said seriously. "There ain't as much to me as you suppose. It seems to me my place is here, right in this little sleepy village. I can be a help to my uncle and to others, and my mother can't do without me."
"Oh!" she cried sharply. This was a stumbling-block she had to recognize. Yet she found that he hardly understood her. She wanted to stir him up to discontent with himself and his surroundings, so that he might be led to enlarge his mental outlook. The thing was for him first to become enlightened, aspiring, superior to his friends—action would follow.
Although it is hard for a man to follow the rapid deviations of a woman's mind, yet the most phlegmatic have their moments of insight. Miss Stretton had revealed a great deal more than she was aware to the young countryman, and he was less dull than he seemed. It came to him that there was something that he wanted to say, but all his ideas grew confused as he thought. He looked around with an uncertain, wistful gaze. He was only a poor man, surrounded by commonplace, meager things; advantages had been lacking to him; perhaps, as she had said, he had not improved his chances. And yet it seemed to him that he had done his duty.
"I know our farmers' lives up here must seem mean to you," he said slowly, "poor and small. You think we might do more and make more out of ourselves. Well, maybe we might. I think that, after a while, we'll find new things to do. I thought once I'd strike out, and I went to Texas. But can you fancy what life is down there among the cattle-drovers? I couldn't stand it, Miss Stretton. I didn't love money well enough to sink myself quite so low. And so I came back. Maybe you think I lay 'round a heap, but I do all that comes in my way, and somebody'd have to do it. If I was ambitious, I s'pose I'd want to be something else besides a country storekeeper, but it seems to me there's more love in my heart for this poor land and for my neighbors than for anything else. I'm not of a restless disposition, and yet I've got my share of pride. I'm not old yet,"—the fine figure straightening a little, involuntarily—"and maybe after a while something else will come to me that I can do."
"And you are content to wait for it—the chance—to come, are you?" she asked, bending her earnest gaze upon him.
"I won't quote the only bit of Milton I remember, but I believe I serve a useful purpose even while I wait for promotion—that is, what you think promotion."