Charlotte was regarding her like a child with a secret trembling on its lips. “I was engaged to him once, Alexina, and we broke it.” Light from many sides began to break in upon Alexina.
“Oh,” she said; “Mrs. Leroy!”
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” said Charlotte. “He was the only man ever caring for me that I never subjugated—except Willy here—” Her voice brightened, while she nodded, in her near-sighted way, at Mr. Henderson. “As for him, he’s ruled me and browbeat me all his life.” And Charlotte smiled contentedly at the minister.
Alexina reached out and, with a passionate sort of protectingness, took hold of the beringed hand wielding a fan with vivacity and sprightliness.
“I wish we could have given him more advantages,” Mrs. Leroy was continuing; “but he’s had to plan for us somehow instead. I remember he wasn’t eleven years old, though it seemed natural enough he should be doing it at the time, when we came over from St. Louis to Louisville without his father, and Willy had to buy the tickets and check the trunks. I suppose I ought to have realized it, but I never had done such things in my life, and I lost my purse in the depot, I remember, and a gentleman found it, and so Willy took hold.
“We sent him into town here, after we came to Aden, to the Presbyterian minister, who taught him. He wanted to go to college, not that he’d admit it now. Then as soon as he was any size he began at his father about reclaiming the grove. That is, Willy planned and Georges listened. Willy’d got an idea from Mr. Jonas that the railroad was coming through some day, just as it has, but it’s been a long pull and a wait, for this is the first full yield for his trees. He’s been offered seven thousand for the crop as it hangs, but the mortgage is eight thousand on the place, which went for fertilizing and ditching and sheds, and living, you know, so Willy is holding for eight thousand and Mr. Jonas is urging for nine.”
Charlotte’s pride in these statements was beaming.
“As soon as the grove proves itself, the place will sell for several times its old value, and we’re going back to Kentucky, to Woodford. Willy wants to buy back my father’s farm, not that he’ll let me say that he does, he’s so afraid of admitting anything, but when he was nineteen, three years ago, he had the measles—wasn’t it dear and comical, like he was a child again—and he let me hold his hand, in the dark room, you know, and we talked about it, when we would go back.”
The girl was patting Charlotte’s hand softly and winking back tears while she laughed. Why tears? She herself had no idea.
Mrs. Leroy had a thousand questions to ask, she said, but somehow she never got to them.