The lad actually flushed. “I—er—I was wondering if—that is, I was hoping that somebody would be marryin’ soon.”
“Goodness, Ken!” said the young teacher, her eyes showing surprise. “I didn’t suppose that small boys were ever match-makers. Is there any one around here who is contemplating matrimony? Sue Piggins is too young, isn’t she? I have seen her driving on Sunday afternoon with Ira Jenkins of late, but—”
“Oh, no’m, Miss Bayley,” the small boy hastened to say. “I wasn’t thinking of Sue and Ira. Mis’ Piggins wouldn’t hear of her daughter marrying a blacksmith’s boy. I—er—I was thinking of a rich girl in the South; I guess she lives there, and I was a-wishing as how she’d marry the Lord of Dunsbury.”
After a puzzled moment, Josephine Bayley laughed merrily. “Boy,” she said, shaking a finger at him, “you’ve been reading one of Mrs. Jenkins’s yellow-covered novels. Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly tells me that the blacksmith’s wife reads novels even while she pares potatoes or scrubs the floor, and there is always a rich girl marrying a lord in one of them.”
Ken grinned rather sheepishly.
“I don’t wonder that you think I’m loony, Miss Bayley,” he acknowledged. “I—er was hoping that Rattlesnake Sam could come down from the mountains before the blizzards set in.” Then, fearing that he would have to reveal his friend’s secret if he said another word, he started to run back down the trail, calling over his shoulder: “Good-night, Miss Bayley. I’ll see you at the party to-morrow. The girls are terribly excited.”
“Gee,” he thought, as he went more slowly after entering the dusk of the cañon that was caused by the sheltering pine-covered stone wall that shut out the sun, although it was still golden in the valley and on the far peaks. “I ’most spilled the beans that time. I’d hate awful to have Miss Bayley find out that Rattlesnake Sam isn’t an old, old ‘fossil,’ whatever that may be. An’ I’d hate to have Mr. Edrington think I couldn’t keep his secret, but it came over me so all of a sudden that to-morrow will be November sixth, Carol’s birthday, and last year we had an awful storm that day, though often the real blizzards don’t set in till Christmas.” Then, as he thought of something more joyful, he began to whistle. “Gee, but I’ll sure be glad when the snow does come, for then Mr. Edrington’s coming down to live with us, and hide up in our loft, if his aunt should prowl around trying to find him to make him marry that girl he doesn’t want. Aunts are queer!” the lad continued to soliloquize as he sauntered along more slowly, swinging a stick he had cut from a tree as he passed. “There’s our great-aunt now. Dixie says she’s rich as anything, and that she lives in such a big house in the South that she could put four little children like us in it and not miss the room we’d take the least mite.” Then, as he turned into the trail that led down toward their own picturesque log cabin, the boy’s heart warmed with a sense of pride and ownership. “Far as I’m concerned,” he decided, “I’d heaps rather live right here than I would with our mother’s priggish Aunt Judith, even if she does own acres and acres, and live in a sort of a mansion with white pillars.”
A moment later Dixie appeared in the open door for she had heard a familiar whistle and the tune was one they both loved— “Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home.”
“Be careful, Ken, that you don’t even hint about the party,” the older girl whispered. “Carol hasn’t an inkling of an idea, and we want to s’prise her.”