Edith and John: A Story of Pittsburgh

by Franklin Smith Farquhar

"Oh, never mind me, I will get there, eventually."

"Come on, then," he said, with coarseness, as he laid hold of her arm to urge her forward; and thus between the two they got her up the hill.

Simultaneously with their rounding the hill from the east, there rounded the same hill from the west a double team of farm horses hitched to a cumbersome wagon. On a flat board seat, across the bed in front, sat a young man about twenty years of age, and a lass of about sixteen blooming summers in her face. The horses moved at a slow and lazy pace, after having pulled a heavy load up the winding stretch of three mile grade, and stopped at the apex for a "blow" before relieving the pressure on their collars for the downward pull. At the stopping of the team, Edith and Star and Jasper came abreast in their walking, and also stopped for a "blow" before entering the hotel.

This meeting seemed to have been the result of prearrangement, so natural did the precise moment of stopping appear. The young man in the wagon was a pronounced blonde; but the many seasons that he had spent in the mountains had bronzed his cheeks to a coppery red, and made him a very healthy and rugged youth, withal. He had a regularity of features that could not be gainsayed for their Grecian similarity. His light blue eyes were sharp, steady, penetrating. With a slouch hat on his head, flapping down on both sides, and tending to pokeness at the crown; a check shirt opened in front and turned aside, revealing a deep manly breast, and turned up sleeves exposing muscular arms from the elbows to a set of rough but well shaped hands—he sat like a monument of Strength and Health and Robust Beauty, resting his horses, and indifferent to the astonished gaze of the city bred people standing by. The young lady by his side, in the flower of young maidenhood, was a counterpart of the young man; and they were, without a doubt, from the same family tree. Her pink-lined sun-bonnet of gingham, accentuated by the warming sun, caused her face to glow, as if on fire, and her red calico dress could not have added more demureness to her looks had it been made of the richest silk.

Thus, as they came by chance together, at such a time and at such a place, and under such pleasant circumstances, the three a-foot and the two a-riding cast contradictory glances at each other. Edith thought she saw in the young mountaineer an embossed replica of some one else; and also in the face of the young girl she was sure there was the heavenly-traced picture of another face. Star, with her head thrown back, in contemplative grandeur, looked at them with a stare of uncertain recognition. The young man in the wagon was about to speak, believing them to be friendly disposed vacationists, and would not mind a turn of conversation with him, being as he was of the out of the way places of their humdrum existence; but before he could do so, Edith suddenly plucked Star by the arm, and with her ran toward the hotel entrance, not stopping till she had gained the wide veranda, panting again, and all excited. Reaching the vantage of that viewpoint, and while standing behind a shielding porch column, she peeped from behind it, like one frightened. She beheld the mountaineer, with the little girl, disappear below the hill, and heard the screeching of the rubber blocks of his wagon, and saw the louting Jasper ambling, with a whistling note to keep him step, down the pikeway toward the hotel.

"Star, that was John's brother!" exclaimed Edith, after he had disappeared over the hill, "and that little girl was his sister."

Resuming her composure over the excitement the incident caused, she sat down in one of the lounging chairs, with Star by her looking serious enough herself.

"I believe so, Edith; but why didn't we stop long enough to talk with them?" said Star, apparently disappointed.

"Oh, I wanted to stop to speak—but that would not do, dear Star—would not do at all; but I will have a talk with them when he comes here next week, never mind," cried Edith, with much joyousness in the ring of her voice. "Isn't she such a pretty creature—just like one of those little fairy mountain girls you see sometimes in romantic plays in the theaters, and I know she is more romantic."

"What do you think of him, Edith—the man—her brother—if that is whom he is?" asked Star, blushing for the first time Edith ever saw that intelligible sign in her face.