CHAPTER VIII
LEAVING HOME
As the time for leaving came on Rose had hours of depression, wherein she wondered if it were worth while. Sometimes it began when she noticed a fugitive look of sorrow on her father's face, and sometimes it was at parting with some of her girl friends, and sometimes it was at thought of Carl. She had spent a year in the Siding in preparation for the work in Madison, and the time of her adventure with the world was near.
Carl came to be a disturbing force during those last few weeks. He had been a factor in all of the days of her life. Almost without thought on her part she had relied upon him. She had run to him for any sort of material help, precisely as to a brother, and now he was a man and would not be easily set aside.
He generally drove her to meeting on Sunday, and they loitered on the shady stretches of the coulé roads. He generally put his arm around her, and she permitted it because it was the way all the young fellows did but she really never considered him in the light of a possible husband.
Most of the girls were precocious in the direction of marriage, and brought all their little allurements to bear with the same object in view which directs the coquetry of a city belle. At sixteen they had beaux, at seventeen many of them actually married and at eighteen they might often be seen riding to town with their husbands, covered with dust, clasping wailing babes in their arms; at twenty they were often thin and bent in the shoulders, and flat and stiff in the hips, sallow and querulous wives of slovenly, careless husbands.
Rose did not hold that Carl had any claim upon her. The incidents of two years before were lived down, both by herself and Carl, for as manhood and womanhood came to them they put away all that which they had done in the thoughtlessness of childhood. To Rose it was an unpleasant memory, because associated with her father's grief. She supposed Carl to feel in the same way about it, and so no allusion to it was ever made by any one.
But Carl was grown to be a great stalwart young fellow, with the blood and sinew of a man, and the passions of a man were developing in his rather thick head. The arm which he laid along the buggy seat was less passive and respectful of late. It clutched in upon her at times; though she shook herself angrily each time, he merely laughed.
So matters stood when she told him she was going away to school in Madison.