“It's my duty to stan' it, an' I'll have to. Don't have much to do but sleep with the Colonel, an' that's a man's work. It takes an uncommon kind of a man, too. You have to praise his strength an' look at his wounds an' hear him sing an' be shoved around the bedroom an' get your head thumped on the wall, an' run for your life when he chases ye. He wants to rassle an' pull fingers about every night. Sometimes he comes home drunk an' sets an' sings like a bird at two o'clock in the morning. I have to get up an' pull his boots off an' let him shove me around. It ain't an easy job, but it's better than some, an' we can't leave Jo alone with him. I've got to put up with it. One night he drove me all over the place with a kind of a spear. I didn't know but he was goin' to stick me with it. By-an'-by I see that he wasn't vicious.
“One evenin' a young feller come there when the Colonel was away, an' behaved himself improper. Jo told Fannie, an' I went an' kicked him out o' the house. The Colonel was wild when he heard of it. He wouldn't allow a boy on the place after that. The first one that come he grabbed a sword off the wall an' made for him. The boy run like a scairt deer, an' the Colonel chased him acrost the door-yard an' half-way to the bridge.
“One day the Colonel found a letter from you to Jo. He see that you was in love with her, an' flew mad an' forbid her to write to you, an' I come to tell ye. He won't let her go on the street alone, which is agoin' too fur—altogether. Jo is a lady—don't you forget it. There's only one man that comes to the house, an' he's a friend o' the Colonel. I guess he's a gentleman.”
Jo's silence had worried me, and now this attitude of her father filled me with alarm.
“Do you—do you think she cares for me?” I asked.
“You bet I do,” he answered, promptly. “There's every sign of it. She promised him that she wouldn't write to you—she had to do it, I guess, an' she wanted me to come an' bring you this.”
He paused and gave me a small package.
“The Colonel has had a fortune come to him,” my friend went on. “He's goin' to move to the old homestead in Merrifield, an' it ain't over twenty mile from here. They'll move in the spring—soon as the snow's off—an' maybe things 'll change by then, so you can come an' see us.”
“You write me when to come, and I'll be there if it's a possible thing,” was my answer..
Sam questioned me as to my work and pay, and I gave him all the particulars.