"You don't know how you stand with her?"
Laddie took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. His feet were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough for any funeral now. At last he spoke.
"I've been trying to figure that out," he said slowly. "I believe the situation is as open to you as it is to me. She was a desperately lonely, homesick girl, when she caught my eye and heart; and I placed myself on her horizon. In her case the women were slow in offering friendship, because, on account of Mrs. Pryor's seclusion, none was felt to be wanted; then Miss Pryor was different in dress and manner. I found a way to let her see that I wanted to be friends, and she accepted my friendship, and at the same time allowed it go only so far. On a few rare occasions, I've met her alone, and we've talked out various phases of life together; but most of our intercourse has taken place in your home, and in your presence. You probably have seen her meet and entertain her friends frequently. I should think you would be more nearly able to gauge my standing with her than I am."
"You haven't told her that you love her?"
"Haven't I though?" cried Laddie. "Man alive! What do you think I'm made of? Putty? Told her? I've told her a thousand times. I've said it, and sung it and whistled it, and looked it, and lived it. I've written it, and ridden it, and this week I've plowed it! Your daughter knows as she knows nothing else, in all this world, that she has only to give me one glance, one word, one gesture of invitation, to find me before her six feet of the worst demoralized beefsteak a woman ever undertook to handle. Told her? Ye Gods! I should say I've told her!"
If any of Pryors had been outdoors they certainly could have heard Mr. Pryor. How he laughed! He shook until he tottered. Laddie took his arm and led him to the fence. He lifted a broad top rail, pushed it between two others across a corner and made a nice comfortable seat for him. After a while Mr. Pryor wiped his eyes. Laddie stood watching him with a slow grin on his face.
"And she hasn't given the signal you are waiting for?" he asked at last.
Laddie slowly shook his head.
"Nary the ghost of a signal!" he said. "Now we come to Sunday before last. I only intimated, vaguely, that a hint of where I stood would be a comfort—and played Jonah. The whale swallowed me at a gulp, and for all my inches, never batted an eye. You see, a few days before I showed her a letter from my brother Jerry, because I thought it might interest her. There was something in it to which I had paid little or no attention, about my going to the city and beginning work in his law office; to cap that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize piece of family tinware. There was a culmination like a thunder clap in a January sky. She said everything that was on her mind about a man of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said I must change my occupation before I came again."
"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"