“But I must, and I will,” Thaine declared.
“Then I won’t listen to you. You are a flirt. Not satisfied with making one girl love you, you want to make all of us care for you.”
“I know what you mean. I thought I loved Jo. Then I knew I didn’t, and I felt in honor bound to keep her from finding it out. But that’s a dead failure of a business. You can’t play that game and win. I’ve learned a good many things this summer, and one of them is that Todd Stewart is the only one who really and truly loves Jo, and she cares as much for him as she does for anybody.”
“How do you know?” Leigh asked as she leaned back now and faced Thaine.
“Because she doesn’t know herself yet. She’s too spoiled by the indulgence of everybody and too pretty. She wants attention. But I found finally, maybe mother helped me 286 a little, that if she has Todd’s attention she’s satisfied. More, she’s comfortable. She was always on thorns with me. Isn’t that enough about Jo?”
“Well?” Leigh queried.
“No, nothing is well yet. Leigh, let me go away to the University. Let me make a name for myself, a world-wide name, maybe, let me fight on my frontier line and then come back and lift the burden you carry now. I want to do big things somewhere away from the Kansas prairies, away from the grind of the farm and country life. Oh, Leigh, you are the only girl I ever can really love.”
He leaned forward and took her hands in his own, his dark eyes, beautiful with the light of love, looking down into hers, his face aglow with the ambition of undisciplined youth.
“Let me help you,” he pleaded.
“It is only sympathy you offer, Thaine, and I don’t want sympathy. You said that game wouldn’t win with Jo. Neither would it with me. I am happy in my work. I’m not afraid of it. The harder part is to get enough money to buy seed and pay interest, and Uncle Jim and I will earn that. I tell you the mortgage must be lifted by alfalfa roots just as Coburn’s book says it will be.”