Tillhurst, when he found his case, like my own, was hopeless with Marjie, preferred that Rachel's name and mine should not be linked together. Also a degree of intimacy had developed suddenly between Tell Mapleson and the young teacher. The latter had nothing to add when Lettie enlarged on Rachel's preference for me and my devotion to her while the Nineteenth Kansas was mobilizing in Topeka.
"And everybody knows," Lettie would declare, "that she's got the money, and Phil will never marry a poor girl. No, sir! No Baronet's going to do that."
Although it was only Lettie who said it, yet the impression went about and fixed itself somehow, that I had given myself over to a life of luxury. I, who at this very time was starving of hunger and almost perishing of cold in a bleak wind-swept land. And to me for all this, there were neither riches nor glory, nor love.
Springvale was very gay that winter. Two young lawyers from Michigan, fresh from the universities, set up a new firm over Judson's store where my father's office had been before "we planted him in the courthouse, where he belongs," as Cam Gentry used to declare. A real-estate and money-loaning firm brought three more young men to our town, while half a dozen families moved out to Kansas from Indiana and made a "Hoosiers' Nest" in our midst. And then Fingal's Creek and Red Range and all the fertile Neosho lands were being taken by settlers. The country population augmented that of the town, nor was the social plane of Springvale lowered by these farmers' sons and daughters, who also were of the salt of the earth.
"For an engaged girl, Marjory Whately's about the most popular I ever see," Dollie Gentry said to Cam one evening, when the Cambridge House was all aglow with light and full of gay company.
Marjie, in a dainty white wool gown with a pink sash about her waist, and pink ribbons in her hair, had just gone from the kitchen with three or four admiring young fellows dancing attendance upon her.
"How can anybody help lovin' her?" Dollie went on.
Cam sighed, "O Lordy! A girl like her to marry that there pole cat! How can the Good Bein' permit it?"
"'Tain't between her and her Maker; it's all between Mrs. Whately and Amos," Dollie asserted. "Now, Cam, has anybody ever heard her say she was engaged? She goes with one and another. Cris Mead's wife says she always has more company'n she can make use of any ways. It's like too much canned fruit a'most. Mis' Mead loves Marjie, and she's so proud of her. Marjie don't wear no ring, neither, not a one, sence she took off Phil Baronet's."
Springvale had sharp eyes; and the best-hearted among us could tell just how many rings any girl did or didn't wear.