“But I don’t want you to go away to war,” Leigh pleaded.
“You don’t want me here.”
Thaine let his hand rest gently on hers for a moment as it lay on top of the easel; then hastily withdrew it.
“Has your alfalfa struck root deep enough to begin to pull up that mortgage yet?” he inquired, as if to drop the unpleasant subject.
“Not yet,” Leigh answered. “We make every acre help to seed more acres. It’s an uphill pull. It’s my war with Spain, you know. But I’m doing something with these little daubs of mine. I have sold a few pieces. The price wasn’t large, but it was something to put against a hungry interest account. Some day I want to paint—”she hesitated.
“What?” Thaine asked.
Leigh was bending over her brushes and paints, and did not look up as she said with an effort at indifference:
“Oh, the Purple Notches. It is so beautiful over there.”
Thaine bit his lips to hold back the words, and Leigh went on:
“Dr. Carey says Uncle Jim couldn’t have held out long at general farming. But the Coburn book was right. The alfalfa is the silent subsoiler, and when the whole quarter is seeded we’ll pull that mortgage up by the roots, all right.” 296